Abhijit Gupta is one of the leading practitioners of book history in twenty-first century India. He looks back at the work done in the past twenty years and considers the challenges ahead in a conversation with Murali Ranganathan
When did you realise that you had evolved into a book historian from a professor of English literature? How did the evolution happen?
It happened the other way around. I started teaching in an English department in 1999 and prior to that I had completed a PhD during 1994-96 on the publishing histories of some women novelists in late 19th-century England. But when I started my doctoral research in 1994, I was not even aware that a discipline called book history existed. So you could say that this was a classic instance of speaking prose without knowing it.
Infosys Dec. 2 announced its 2020 Infosys Prize winners, with a trio of Indian Americans named among the six winners.
The Infosys Prize endeavors to elevate the prestige of science and research in India and inspire young Indians to choose a vocation in research, the prize website said.
The award is given annually to honor outstanding achievements of contemporary researchers and scientists across six categories, including engineering and computer sciences; humanities; life sciences; mathematical sciences; physical sciences; and social sciences.
Among the prize winners were Sourav Chatterjee in mathematical sciences, Raj Chetty in social sciences, and Hari Balakrishnan in engineering and computer science.