Work of agricultural scientist M.S. Swaminathan archived

The collection is housed at the Archives at National Centre for Biological Sciences in Bengaluru, a public collecting centre for the history of science in contemporary India

Agricultural scientist M.S. Swaminathan’s work and life, spanning over 80 years, have been archived and made public through the Archives at the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) in Bengaluru as ‘The MSS Papers’.

During the launch held recently, dignitaries including K. Vijay Raghavan, former Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India, Ashok Kumar Singh, Director, ICAR-Indian Agricultural Research Institute, and N. Ram, Director, The Hindu Group, spoke about the roles of M.S. Swaminathan (MSS) as a plant geneticist, agricultural scientist, humanitarian, communicator and institution builder.

‘The MSS Papers’, which contains over 48,000 objects, was made possible with support from TNQ Technologies and the trustees of the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation, a press release said.

The collection is housed at the Archives at NCBS, a public collecting centre for the history of science in contemporary India, and organised across two accession groups and nine series. They are in the form of research notes, correspondence, hitherto unpublished writings, media clippings, photographs, published works and administrative notes from dozens of institutions and committees, and with material dating back to the early 1930s. The collection is available for public research and requests.