Hiralal Chaudhuri

Hiralal Chaudhuri was born on 21 November 1921 in the village of Kubajpur, adjacent to the Surma Valley in Sylhet (then Srihatta), Assam (in present-day Bangladesh), British India. His father Girish Chandra Chaudhuri was a civil engineer and an officer under the Government of Assam. His mother was Soroshibala Chaudhuri. Hiralal was a very talented student from his early days. He completed his primary education from Laban Bengali Primary School, Shilong. He passed matriculation from Gomes School in Sylhet in 1936 with letters in four subjects. Due to being a meritorious student, he was admitted to ISC on the scholarship of meritorious students of Bangabasi College, Calcutta. He became the first in B.Sc with Honors in 1941 and passed M.Sc in Zoology from Baliganj Science College under University of Calcutta in 1943. In 1954, he went to the USA for a special training under the guidance of H. S. Swingle at Auburn University. Later in 1955, he obtained an MS degree in Fisheries management from Auburn University in Alabama, USA for his thesis paper on the effect of pituitary injection on pond fish reproduction.[4] Then he moved back to India and received Ph.D. from Calcutta University in 1961.[5] The subject of his research was the effect of pituitary injection on fish breeding. In 2010, the Central Institute of Fisheries Education, Deemed University conferred his degree of D.Sc.[4]

After passing his M.Sc., he started teaching in the department of biology at Murari Chand College, Sylhet. In the period of Partition of India, he lost his job with five colleagues. Then he migrated to India and joined the Central Inland Fisheries Research Institute (then Manirampur Central Fisheries Station) near Barrackpore on 1 June 1948 as a junior research assistant. Beside the headquarters, he also researched in the CIFRI regional center at Cuttack, Orissa. In Cuttack CIFRI center he served as junior research assistant from 1948-50, senior research assistant from 1950-55, fishery extension officer from 1959-60, fish breeding-in-charge from 1960-63 and also the officer-in-charge in 1964. He then worked in the Fish Culture Division of Bhubaneswar from 1971-75 (present day Central Institute of Freshwater Aquaculture).[5] He also served as a director of CIFRI on various sessions. He held various posts till his retirement in 1993. In the period of 1967-76, he worked as a Fishery Advisor of Food and Agricultural Organization/United Nations Development Programme (FAO/UNDP) in Myanmar. After taking voluntary retirement from active government service, he joined the Southeast Asian Fisheries Development Center (SEAFDEC) and served as a deputy director from 1975-79. During 1988-93 he served as a visiting professor at UPLB in the Philippines.[6][7]

• Chandrakala Hora Memorial Gold Medal, 1960[9]
• Rafi Ahmed Kidwai Award
• Gamma Sigma Delta Award
• Golden Key Award of the Auburn University, USA
• World Aquaculture Award, 1994[10]
• Asiatic Society Award, 6 May 2002
• Honorary D.Sc by Central Institute of Fisheries Education, Mumbai
• Chair in Fisheries in the name of Hiralal Chaudhuri by University of Calcutta[1]
• In 2001 Indian Government announced 10 July as the National Fish Farmers Day to honor Prof. Chaudhuri.[2]

Hiralal Chaudhuri was honoured as the Father of induced breeding of the Carp and also considered as the pioneer of Blue revolution in the world.[11] In September 1994, A conference on Applications of Endocrinology to Pacific Rim Aquaculture was organised in his honor at the Bodega Merin Laboratory of University of California.[4]