APPENDIX B

Pioneer Biographies
of the Indian Period from 1947

Pranab Ganguly (*1929)

Pranab Ganguly is the first Indian anthropologist to have received all of his academic training after Indian independence. He received his MA in anthropology from Calcutta University in 1951 and his PhD from the same university in 1966 with the thesis Physical Anthropology of the Nicobarese. In 1973, again from Calcutta University, the thesis Somatic Variability in North Indian Brahmans and Muslims in Relation to Urbanization and Economic Status earned him his DSc.

Although Ganguly specialized in physical anthropology, his interests were much wider. They also covered Andamanese linguistics, religion, demography, archaeology and ethnography. A distinguished career within the Anthropological Survey of India (which he had joined in 1969) was highlighted by a number of rewards, the Bertillon Medal, the Sir Asutosh Mookerjee Gold Medal, the Bengal Immunity Research Prize and Gold Medal, and the Griffith Memorial Prize.

Although interested and working in other areas of India besides the Andamans, Pranab Ganguly's work on the Andamanese is important and he fully was far more worried about the Bush police than the elephants. 

 

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