#KnowYourAlumni : Dr. Nil Ratan Banerjee
Dr Nil Ratan Banerjee is a Praktani of ’39-Batch, having studied in Vidyapith Class IV to VIII (1932-36). He was elder brother of our late Alumnus Shri Amalendu Banerjee (V149A00035) of ’49-Batch.
Dr Nil Ratan Banerjee is a distinguished alumni of Vidyapith and we are all fortunate to have him one among us. A King’s Scholar of the former C.P and Berar, Dr Banerjee is one of the distinguished band field of archaeologists to be trained by Sir Mortimer Wheeler.
Some of his accomplishments are as follows :
1945: Master’s Degree in History from Allahabad University
1947: Scholar in the survey for exploring the megalithic monuments in south India
1948: Appointed Dy Superintending Archaeologist
1948: Appointed Director of Survey
1959: Awarded Fellowship by the German Academic Exchange Service to study West Asian Archaeology at The Free University of Berlin
1961: Awarded Fellowship by the Royal Government of Netherlands to conduct research on the Iron Age of India in Amsterdam
1963: Awarded D.Phil by the Calcutta University, Kolkata for pioneering work on research on Iron Age of India
1966-72: Appointed Archaeological Advisor to H.M’s Govt of Nepal.
1976: Appointed the Director of National Museum, New Delhi
1980: Appointed visiting Professor of B.H.U. Varanasi, post his retirement from National Museum.
Among his various explorations in India and Nepal, Sanur, Amirthamangalam, Sengamedu, Nagda, Ujjain, and Lumbini are noteworthy. He authored several books and about a hundred research papers on diverse subjects encompassing art, archaeology, anthropology and museology. He was in the board of Ancient Nepal, the official bulletin of Department of Archaeology, Government of Nepal.
He is also a distinguished linguist being equally home in Tamil, Hindi, Marathi, Nepalese, Bengali, Sanskrit and German, besides English.
