English: S. M. SIRCAR (1908-1978)

Having worked with Professor F. C. Gregory at the Imperial College of Science and Technology (London), on the relationship between respiration and nitrogen metabolism in potato tuber; Sourindra Mohan Sircar, took over as Acting Head of the Department of Biology at Dacca (now Dhaka) University (1945-47) before a brief stay at the Central College of Agriculture at IARI, 1947-48, (then affiliated to Delhi University).

Sircar returned to Calcutta (now Kolkata) to become the Head of the Botany Department. Toward the later part of his career, he became the Director of the Bose Institute (among the pioneering institutions in India that was founded by Sir J. C. Bose).

Sircar and his students and assisted by his son P. K. Sircar, were among the first to embark on isolation and identification of plant growth substances (gibberellins and cytokinins) from plants growing in and around Calcutta, including mangrove plants. They managed to extract a novel gibberellin type from a mangrove plant, of the Sonneratia apetala species. His team investigated the basic and applied problems related to rice such as anatomical changes in the growing point accompanying a transition from the vegetative to the reproductive state, germination and viability of rice varieties, and their mineral nutrition, photoperiodism and vernalization.

His other interests included biochemical changes in rice and mungbean seed germination and their control mechanism. In 1971, he published his book 'Plant Hormone Research in India', ICAR, New Delhi.