New Delhi, Aug. 29 -- Prafulla Chandra Ray's beef with the British went beyond politics. He wanted to beat them at the thing that mattered to a rapidly industrialising world: making things.

It was a radical idea in late nineteenth-century India. Indians could study and excel at science. They could teach it, write papers about it and win international recognition. But manufacturing medicines, chemicals or consumer products was deemed to be the preserve of the British.

PC Ray was one among a handful of Indians who turned that thinking upside down. Ray belonged to an extraordinary generation of Bengali scientists that included men like Jagadish Chandra Bose, CV Raman, Satyendra Nath Bose and Meghnad Saha.

The difference was that Ray wante...