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Ashish Lahiri, also known as Asish Kumar Lahiri (born 1948) is an Indian writer, translator, lexicographer, and an independent researcher in the field of History of Science, specializing in the science-culture interface. The Indian author is best known for his Bengali translation of J.D. Bernal's magnum opus Science in History. Life and Career

Ashish Lahiri was born on 4 September 1948 at Jamshedpur in Bihar (now Jharkhand), India. Born into a middle class family with musical inclination, he was drawn towards Tagore’s music at an early age. He was educated at the Scottish Church Collegiate School and the City College, Kolkata. Inspired by the Naxalbari movement in 1967, he started studying Marxism and began to revaluate the so-called Bengal Renaissance of the Nineteenth century. His first article ‘Tagore and Jallianwallahbag’ appeared in 1971 in Frontier, the independent left weekly edited by Samar Sen. Under the pen name ‘Achena Mitra’ (Unknown Friend) he wrote an article in 1972 criticising Tagore in Anushtup, the Bengali quarterly edited by Anil Acharya. This brought him in contact with Dipendu Chakrabarty, Professor of English at the Calcutta University and Bengali essayist. In 1973 Dipendu Chakarabrty’s group published the journal Prastuti (Preparation), which for official registration difficulties, came to be known from 1974 as Prastutiparba (The Preparatory Phase). Later, Prof. Chakrabarty dissociated from the group and Lahiri became the editor and publisher of this journal. Anupam Majumdar, Kalyan Maity. Pulak Chanda, Prabrit Das Mohapatra, Prabir Mukhopadhyay and Salil Biswas were members of the editorial board.

During the 1975 Emergency declared by Indira Gandhi, the journal’s office shifted to Kathashilpa, a publishing house owned by Abani Ranjan Ray.

In 1982 Prastutiparba ceased publication. In 1985 Lahiri became associated with the science monthly Anwesha (Search), edited by Dr. Abhijit Lahiri and Siddhartha Ghosh and published from Kathashilpa. It was in Anwesha that Ashish started serialising the Bengali translation of Bernal’s Science in History.

Meanwhile, he had become closely associated with Professor Gouri Prasad Ghosh, lexicographer, Shakespeare scholar and amateur astrophysicist. Later he became a member of the editorial group of the award-winning Everyman’s Dictionary: English to Bengali (1999) under the chief editorship of Prof. Ghosh.

Lahiri is now the editor of Bangla Monthly Review, a quarterly Bengali version of Monthly Review, New York.

Under the aegis of the Pavlov Institute, Kolkata, Lahiri has recently completed a research on the scientific achievements of Radhanath Sikdar, sponsored by the History of Science wing of the Indian National Academy of Sciences, New Delhi. He is currently associated with the teaching of History of Science at the Asiatic Society, Kolkata and the National Council of Science Museums.

Awards Bibliography

Bengali Publications
 * Sonskritir Dwikhondon (The Bifurcation of Culture), 1996, out of print


 * Bigyaner Darshan o Karl Popper (Philosophy of Science and Karl Popper) 2000, 2nd edition
 * Onno Kono Sadhonar Fol (A Clash of Two Paradigms: Vidyasagar and Vivekananda), 2002, 3rdedition


 * Bigyanir Ishwar o Onnanno Bitarka (The Scientist’s God and Other Debates), 2004, 3rd edition
 * Kon se Jhorer Bhul (The Storm’s Blunder), 2006
 * Akshay Kumar Datta: Aandhaar Raate Ekla Pothik (Akshay Kumar Datta: Scholar Extra-Ordinary), 2007, out of print
 * Bhagabaner Letti: Ishwar, Na-Ishwar, Bigyan, Samaj (Theism, Atheism, Science, Society), 2008, 2nd edition
 * Ashun, Banglay Phiri (Let’s Revisit Bangla), 2008, 2nd edition
 * Bigyan o Motadarsho (Science and Ideology), 2009, 3rd edition
 * Swami Vivekananda o Bangalir Secular Bibek (Swami Vivekananda and Bengali Secularist Tradition) 2012, 2nd edition
 * Rabindranath: Manusher dharma, Manusher Bigyan (Tagore: The Science and the Religion of Man), 2012, 2nd edition
 * Sanskritir Bangla Bajar (The Mad Market of Bangla Culture), 2012, out of print


 * Dwishotoborshe Radhanath Sikdar (Radhanath Sikdar: A Bi-Centennial Tribute) 2013, out of print


 * Rabindrasangeet Theke Rabindranathe: Ek Byaktigoto Abhijatra (From Tagore’s Music to Tagore: A Personal Journey), 2014, 2nd edition

English Publications
 * Bhadraloki Juktibader Dokkhinaborto (The Rightist Turn of the Bhadralok’s Rationalism), 2015
 * Radhanath Sikdar: Beyond the Peak, out of print
 * Science in Nineteenth Century Bengal: Caught between Two Cultures?, 2013

Dictionaries
 * Radhanath Sikdar and Colonial Science, 2017
 * Everyman's English-Bengali Dictionary (co-editor), 1999


 * Samsad English-Bengali-English Dictionary (co-editor), 2015

Edited Books
 * Junior Illustrated Dictionary English-Bengali, 2011
 * Naxalbari and After: A Frontier Anthology in two volumes (with Samar Sen and Debabrata Panda), 1978

Translated Works
 * Shibaram Chakrabartyr Moscow Banam Pondicherry (On Moscow versus Pondicherry by Shibaram Chakraborty (with Ramkrishna Bhattacharya)
 * Jack London's White Fang


 * Joseph Needham's History and Human Values


 * Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin's The Wandering Scientist
 * Amartya Sen’s On Interpreting India’s Past


 * Bipan Chandra and others' India after Independence

Currently, he is translating Sumit Sarkar's Modern Times
 * Ram Chandra Guha's India after Gandhi