Gokulananda Mahapatra Compilation

Gokulanada Mahapatra is a well known name in popular sceience writing. He was born in 1922 at Bhadrak and died on July 10, 2013, on the auspicious day of Car festival of Sri Jagannath. After finishing schooling at Bhadrak, he graduated from Ravenshaw college and did his M.Sc. at Presidency college of Kolkata. Along with his studies he loved playing football.


While studying at Kolkata, he read some popular science book in Bengali and was inspired to write in Odia. His first article was sent to the journal Sankha, but for some reason, it could not be published and was lost for ever. But next year in 1946, his second article was published in Sankha. After that many articles were published in various magazines.

During that time, Kolkata All India Radio was broadcasting odia programme for 30 minutes every evening. Gokulananda was writing one article per month on science for this programme. In 1949 along with some interested science professors and doctors he started Bigyan Prachar Samiti and which added a new dimension to Odia literature in the form of popular science writings. Not only Gokulananda and Bigyan Prachar Samiti (BPS) published many books and articles, but also created many new science writers.

Gokulananda has written many popular science books, science fictions, essays, and a drama too. He has edited many compilations of articles presented at the sessions of BPS. He was the first person who started writing science fiction in Odia. His another achievement is the compilation of science encyclopedia and glossary of common scientific and technological terms in general use.

He had received many awards like Odisha Sahitya Academy award, Samanta Chandrasekhar prize (1988), Sarala Puraskar (1994) and was honoured by many organizations. He will be remembered for his writing.

Digital versions of Prof. Gokulananda Mahapatra’s writings can be accessed via the table below which provides links for downloading these. Complete books in pdf format can be downloaded by clicking on the ‘image’ or ‘download’ links.