Birbal Sahni was born on 14 November 1891 in the small town of Bhera in the Shahpur District of Punjab, now in Pakistan. His father, Ruchi Ram Sahni, had worked with the great minds of physics of that era, Rutherford, Thompson and Bohr, and set up the Punjab Science Institute in Lahore. Since childhood, Birbal Sahni developed an interest in botany during the long treks with his father. He went to England and graduated from Cambridge. He worked with Prof Seaward on a Revision of Indian Gondwana Plants. For his contribution to the study of fossil plants, Sahni received in 1919 a DSc from the University of London. In 1921, he became the first professor of the newly opened Botany Department at Lucknow University. Sahni was a great teacher and a superb communicator of science. He was the first Indian Botanist to be conferred the Fellowship of the Royal Society in 1956. Sahni’s research covered almost all aspects of palaeobotany in India. Birbal Sahni laid the foundation for fossil research in India. Sahni was multi-talented and also had a keen interest in music, chess, tennis, clay modelling and Sanskrit. His discoveries have helped us understand the evolution history of Indian plants. Sahni was greatly interested in archaeology and he published several papers in this field. His work on the “Technique of casting coins in ancient India” set a new standard in archaeological research in India. He was also the founder member of the Indian Botanical Society. He founded the Institute of Palaeobotany at Lucknow. After his sudden death, his wife, Savitri Suri, helped it get international recognition. The institute was later renamed Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeobotany in 1969. Trivia At Cambridge, Jawaharlal Nehru was the classmate of Birbal Sahni who also laid the foundation stone of Sahni’s institute in 1949,
Birbal had four brothers and three sisters. Two of the brothers (Bhabhiji’s Chachajis) both whom of were advocates lived in Gujaranwala, about 35 miles from Lahore. They sometimes attended court in Lahore, where they would drop in and visit our grandmother, their niece. One brother Ram Lal Anand later settled in Jammu, in a big ramb facing and’s the Jammu canal. We visited them during our move to Srinagar in 1963 son is Kuldip Anand. Kuldip Anand’s son is Vikram Anand. We used to call our grandmother Bhabhiji. She was born in 1901 in Bhera. She attended a school called Kanya Pathshala where one of her classmates was Kshalya, our father’s eldest sister.
One of Bhabhiji’s bhuas, her father’s eldest sister, also named Ishwar Devi, was married to Lala Ruchi Ram Sahni. He was an important person in Lahore circles. He was the first Indian professor of chemistry at Govt College, Lahore. He was also on the Lahore Improvement Trust. He was a Brahma Samajist and as such was on the managing committee of Dayal Singh College, Lahore (now at Delhi University).
One of Ruchi Ram Sahni’s sons – Birbal Sahni was a preeminent scientist of India, a botanist. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birbal_Sahni) He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London (FRS) in 1936, the highest British Scientific Honor, awarded first to an Indian botanist. He set up a paleo-botany institute in Lucknow. This institute still exists and was run for many years by his wife Savitri after Birbal Sahni’s, untimely early passing away. Savitri Sahni sends a congratulatory letter to my mother on the occasion of the marriage of my sister Shalini to Dr Pawan Sikka. Another son of Ruchi Ram Sahni was a doctor and a third son was an advocate/barrister.
A grandson of Ruchi Ram Sahni was Mulk Raj Sahni an eminent Geologist. His son Dr. Ashok Sahni is also an internationally famous Geologist and Palaeontologist, now living in Chandigarh and a Professor Emeritus at Punjab University in Chandigarh (http://insaindia.org/detail.php?id=N92-1101)
One of Ruchi’s daughters was married to Prof Sita Ram Kohli of Bhera, who was then the principal of a Government College in Lahore. Their daughter Usha Kohli -later called Mrs. Usha Nath was a class fellow of our mother in Kinnard College. Usha Nath joined the Foreign Service and before her retirement served as India’s ambassador to Ireland. Last I know she lived in Vikas Kunj near Janakpuri in New Delhi. Usha’s brother -Gautam Kohli held a top post in Indian Oil Corporation in Dehradun (?). Another brother was a botanist. He married an Irish girl and stayed in Ireland.
The youngest daughter of Ruchi Ram was Lakshwanti, married into a Malhotra family. Granddaughter is Neera Sawhney, now Neera Burra. Neera is a sociologist who worked for over two decades with UNDP. She lives in New Delhi and is active in the field of highlighting women and children issues.