Chapter 3: Basic Research in Frontier Areas of Life Sciences

Under globalisation and patent regime, science is no longer entirely geared towards gaining knowledge for the sake of satisfying curiosity. While referring to the bygone decades, that is, 1950s and 1960s, there were water-tight compartmentalisation of botany, zoology, chemistry and physics. Even in the area of teaching ‘evolution’ in the botany department, no examples from animal kingdom would be appreciated. In even agricultural sciences, interaction between the departments of entomology, mycology and plant pathology was either non-existent or existent only feebly despite the fact that various insect pests are the vectors of viral diseases. Those were the times when Swaminathan broke the barriers across disciplines and provided an inter-disciplinary approach for solving several intricate problems in biological sciences. He did what none had ever done before. Agriculture as a science, to him, needed to integrate the life and physical sciences as well as the social sciences. He is a living encyclopaedia and it is gratifying that the prestigious ‘Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI) Library’ has been dedicated as ‘Professor M.S. Swaminathan Library’ in April 2016…