Kailas (Kailash) Nath Kaul (1905–1983) was an Indian botanist, agronomist, agricultural scientist, horticulturist, herbalist, and naturalist, and a world authority on Arecaceae in the 1950s. He has been recognized for his contributions to a number of biological sciences.
Notable achievements
Professor Kaul established the National Botanical Gardens, now the National Botanical Research Institute at Lucknow, India, in 1948, after working in the Herbarium of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, at the Natural History Museum, formerly the British Museum (Natural History), London, and lecturing at several universities in the United Kingdom, including the University of Cambridge, in the period 1939-1944. He remained Director of the National Botanical Gardens till 1965. In this period, the National Botanical Gardens, Lucknow (India), became one of the world's five best botanical gardens, along with the botanical gardens at Kew (England), Java (Indonesia), Paris (France) and New York (USA). From 1953 to 1965, Professor Kaul surveyed botanically the whole of India, from the Karakoram Mountains in the north to Kanyakumari at the southern tip of the country, and from the North East Frontier Agency and Assam in the east to the Rann of Kutch in the west. During the same period, he contributed to the development of the botanical gardens at Peradeniya (Sri Lanka), Singapore, Bogor (Indonesia), Bangkok (Thailand), Hong Kong, Tokyo (Japan), and Manila (Philippines). He represented India at the International Botanical Congresses in Paris (1954), Montreal (1959), and Edinburgh (1964). In 1968, he was elected as the President of the Palaeobotanical Society, India. In 1975, he was appointed as the first Vice Chancellor of the Chandra Shekhar Azad University of Agriculture and Technology, Kanpur, India.
Kaul's 1929 work on the medicinal plant, Artemisia brevifolia, in the Kashmir Valley caused yields of Santonin, an anthelminthic, from the plant to increase six times. This made the production of Santonin economically viable in India.
In 1947, Professor Kaul discovered fresh water aquifers in the princely state of Jodhpur in the Thar Desert, India, mainly by studying the spatial patterns of vegetation and depths of wells in the region. A small aircraft owned by Maharaja Umaid Singh of Jodhpur was used by him to conduct aerial surveys for this purpose. He then prepared a Desert Reclamation Scheme to solve the enigma of Jodhpur's water shortage. In 1949-50, he organised the 'Underground Water Board for Rajasthan', Jaipur.
In 1969, Professor Kaul, a native of the Jhelum Valley in Kashmir, was appointed the Director, Gardens, Parks and Floriculture in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. He worked for several years on the conservation and management of floral biodiversity and the rejuvenation of the Mogul-era gardens in the state, as the advisor to the Chief Minister on the subject.
Professor Kaul was responsible for the reclamation of several thousand acres of alkaline land in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. His work has been named The Banthra Formula after Banthra, the place where it was initiated in 1953. The project involved organic amendments and biological methods, including the cultivation of alkali-tolerant herbaceous, shrub and tree species. It had a decentralized community-based development approach, and benefited subsistence and small-scale commercial farmers, through intensification and diversification of biomass production for purposes such as food, fuel, fodder, fertilizer, medicare, timber, animal husbandry, aquaculture, soil amelioration, and bioaesthetics.
As the architect of the Vigyan Mandir (School of Science) Scheme (1948), which was later adopted by the Government of India, Kaul encouraged science education and research in the country. He also worked for the promotion of traditional sculpture, painting, and applied arts, and was elected as the President of the Lalit Kala Akademi of Uttar Pradesh in 1965.
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