Talk:Kishori Mohan Bandyopadhyay

Scanty source
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are added because this article is clearly a write-up of one who has first-hand knowledge of the person, or direct relative, but lacks documented sources. Internet search reveals only a handful of mention. There are indeed two blogs, Wordpress and Blogspot, which are—dare I suspect—created for the purpose. All the cited references mention the person only in passing. Interestingly this is exactly what Ronald Ross wanted—suppress Bandyopadhyay into total obscurity. Ross never mentioned, insofar as my sources indicate, Bandyopadhyay in his technical papers, not even once in his elaborate-547-page-long-autobiography Memoirs, for shame. I have my personal suspicion that Bandyopadhyay might have made much more contributions in malaria research than we shall ever know! Chhandama (talk) 13:54, 15 February 2014 (UTC)

Points to resolve
This article has some historical problems, factual errors and ostensibly grandiose claims, and need to be resolved. For instance
 * 1) Kishori Mohan Bandyopadhyay (perhaps to be identified with Kishori Mohan Banerjee in some literature) could not be assistant to Ross from 1881-1898 as Ross was in Kolkata only from 1898.
 * 2) In Cunningham's laboratory, the only staff were a native laboratory-assistant and a "durwan," both old men (Memoirs 282). To replace the imcompetent workers, Ross self-recruited two assistants Mohammed (Mahomed) Bux and Purboona (who later deserted him). And along came Lutchman out of the blue. (Was he Bandyopadhya whom Amitav Ghosh finctionalised in The Calcutta Chromosome as Lutchman or Laakhan, as Ross was known to be quite forgetful of names in real life?)
 * 3) It is quite presumptuous to give Bandyopahdyay an epithet "father of entomology" as there is not a single shred of his scientific contribution or minor reference in entomology by that name, before or since.
 * 4) He was merely an undergradute student at the time, and his expertise in research was doubful. Note that Ross worked only for four months before his ultimate discovery in July 1898, and he properly credited Bux on entomological works in his Nobel Lecture and Memoirs. (Did Bux receive a Gold Medal?)
 * 5) These chronological and individual analyses directly imply that (even if he was Latchman) Bandyopadhyay did not make groundbreaking contribtion to malaria research of Ross. A simple reason is that Ross had already discovered the human malaria-mosquito transmission on 20 August 1897 in Secunderabad. In Kolkata he only worked on bird malaria to confirm the complete life cycle. And if Ross was ever to share his credit it would be most likely with Bux
 * 6) Further Ross never claimed to have doscovered malaria transmission through Anopheles, as a non-zoologist, all he could identify was "dapple-winged mosquito". If Bandyopadhyay were an impressive zoologist, Ross's discovery could have been more definite!

Tha notability of this person largely centres on these points.Chhandama (talk) 04:07, 8 March 2014 (UTC)


 * I extended my research through actually reading The Calcutta Chromosome and communicating the author itself. The resounding finding is that Bandyopadhyay has nothing to do in the novel. Therefore points 2 and 4 are resolved, narrowing down the evidence that Bandyopadhyay had little or no significant contribution in Ross' discovery. Chhandama (talk) 02:47, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

New evidence
Krishanu Heritage study came up with the evidence that there were two historical persons by the same name, one associated with Ross, and the other, a social activist and banker, and claimed that (see this edit entry): "The old article is mingling of two personalities with same name. One Kishorimohan who helped Ronald Ross was not at all connected with Panihati. But the image which is used in the article is of Kishorimohan who was a noted social worker and contributed a lot in Anti Malaria Cooperative Movement. I have sufficient proof regarding the changes made by me. It is based on an obituary note published in Sonar Bangla in September, 11029 issue written by one Benimadhab Chattopadhyay." This must be the root of the misunderstanding among Bengali scholars. The evidences are scrappy, and there is no evidence that the alleged scientist Bandyopadhyay contributed to anything in science, let alone to Ross's works. Chhandama (talk) 04:56, 15 September 2022 (UTC)