In the city of Ajmer, on 22 February 1928, a boy named Pushpa Mittra Bhargava was born into a middle-class family. His father, Ram Chandra Bhargava, was a medical doctor and public-health professional; his mother, Gayatri, brought quiet strength to the household. When the family moved to Varanasi, the young Pushpa proved so advanced that schools placed him directly into higher classes. He completed his schooling, then earned a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in synthetic organic chemistry from Lucknow University by the age of twenty-one.

Chemistry, however, did not hold him for long. Sensing that the future of biology lay at the cellular and molecular level, he shifted fields. Post-doctoral work in the United States with Charles Heidelberger (where he contributed to early studies that helped develop the anticancer drug 5-fluorouracil) and later at the National Institute for Medical Research in London completed his transformation into a molecular biologist. He returned to India determined to build a modern biology that the country still lacked.

In Hyderabad he worked first at the Regional Research Laboratory (later IICT) and then, in 1977, founded the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB). Under his leadership CCMB became one of India’s premier research institutions—open, international in outlook, and committed to both basic science and its application to human needs. He also helped shape the Department of Biotechnology and the Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics. More than 125 research papers and several books stand as the formal record of his scientific work; the living record is the generation of biologists he trained and inspired.

Bhargava was never content to remain inside the laboratory. He argued that scientific temper was a civic duty and that rationality must challenge superstition and commercial excess alike. He opposed the uncritical introduction of genetically modified crops, returned his Padma Bhushan in 2015 as a protest against what he saw as a climate of intolerance, and spoke fearlessly on matters of science, ethics and public policy.

One younger scientist once asked him why he continued to speak so bluntly when it cost him influence.

Dr. Bhargava answered, “Science without courage is only technique. A society that will not tolerate honest questions will not produce honest knowledge.”

In 1986 the Government of India had awarded him the Padma Bhushan for his contributions to science. He remained a writer, institution-builder and public intellectual until the end. Pushpa Mittra Bhargava died in Hyderabad on 1 August 2017 at the age of eighty-nine. In the history of Indian science he is remembered as the man who brought modern molecular biology to the country, built its finest laboratories, and insisted that scientific rationality must remain a living public virtue.