List of people from Kolkata

List of notable people from Kolkata. The city of Kolkata has been regarded as the cultural capital of India. ^[1]

This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by adding missing items with reliable sources.

Writers, including poets

• Rabindranath Tagore, 1st non-European to win a Nobel Prize
• Gulzar
• Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay
• Kumudini Basu
• Suchitra Bhattacharya
• Sukanta Bhattacharya
• Buddhadev Bose
• Amiya Chakravarty
• Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay
• Shakti Chattopadhyay
• Nirad C. Chaudhuri
• Pramatha Chowdhury
• Upendrakishore Ray Chowdhury
• Dinesh Das
• Jibanananda Das
• Henry Louis Vivian Derozio
• Bishnu Dey
• Michael Madhusudan Dutta
• Satyendranath Dutta
• Sudhindranath Dutta
• Sunil Gangopadhyay
• Joy Goswami
• Amelia Horne
• Kazi Nazrul Islam
• Sisir Kumar Maitra
• Binoy Majumdar
• Mohitolal Majumdar
• Samaresh Majumdar (b.1944)
• Arun Mitra
• Dinabandhu Mitra
• Premendra Mitra
• Dhan Gopal Mukerji
• Subhas Mukhopadhyay
• Purnendu Patri
• Christopher Raja
• Annada Shankar Ray
• Dwijendralal Ray
• Tarapada Ray
• Sukumar Ray
• Samar Sen
• Syed Mujtaba Ali
• S Wajid Ali
• Badal Sircar, dramatist and theatre director
• Shobhanasundari Mukhopadhyay, Shovana Devi Tagore, folklorist
• Mimi Mondal, First Indian English writer who nominated for Hugo Award.
• Srijato

Philosophers and religious teachers

The most famous religious figure of Kolkata is Mother Teresa. Others are (in order of surname):

• Bhakti Hridaya Bon (1901–1982)
• Bhakti Prajnana Kesava Goswami (1898–1968)
• Rajendra Pillai (born 1968) ^{[2] [3]}
• A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (1896–1977), founder of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON)
• Ramakrishna (1836–1886)
• Ram Mohan Roy (1772–1833)
• Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati (1874–1837), founder of Gaudiya Math
• Keshab Chandra Sen (1838–1884)
• Debendranath Tagore (1817–1905)
• Bhaktivinoda Thakur (1838–1914)
• Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902)
• Paramhansa Yogananda (1893-1952)

Engineers and scientists

List in order of surname.

• James Atkinson (1780–1852), surgeon, artist and Persian scholar
• R. D. Banerji, archeologist
• Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose (1858–1937), Bengali polymath, physicist, biologist, biophysicist, botanist and archaeologist
• Upendranath Brahmachari
• Asima Chatterjee (1917–2006), chemist
• Debendra Mohan Bose (1875–1975), physicist
• Satyendra Nath Bose (1894–1974), physicist and polymath from Bengal
• Suniti Kumar Chattopadhyay (1890–1977), Bengali linguist
• Barun De (1932–2013), historian
• Brajendranath De (1852–1932), civil servant and orientalist
• Anil Kumar Gain (1919–1978), mathematician and statistician
• J.B.S. Haldane (1892–1964), British-Indian scientist, known for his work in the study of physiology, genetics, evolutionary biology, and mathematics
• Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis (1893–1972), Bengali scientist and applied statistician
• R.C. Majumdar (1884–1980), historian
• P. J. Marshall (born 1933), historian
• Ujjwal Maulik (born 1965), computer scientist
• Subhash Mukhopadhyay (1931–1981), physician
• Sisir Kumar Mitra (1890–1963), physicist
• Rajat Kanta Ray, historian
• Amal Kumar Raychaudhuri (1922–2005), physicist, known for his research in general relativity and cosmology
• Tapan Raychaudhuri (1926–2014), historian
• Tapati Guha-Thakurta (born 1957), historian
• Sukanta Chaudhuri (born 1950), literary scholar
• Ananda Lal (born 1955), academic and theatre scholar
• C. R. Rao (1920–2023), mathematician and statistician
• Prafulla Chandra Roy (1861–1944), Bengali chemist, educationist, historian, industrialist and philanthropist
• Meghnad Saha (1893–1956), astrophysicist
• Sir Jadunath Sarkar (1870–1958), historian
• Sumit Sarkar (born 1939), historian
• Susobhan Sarkar (1900–1982), historian
• Tapan Kumar Sarkar (1948–2021), electrical engineer
• Ashoke Sen (born 1956), theoretical physicist
• Bikas K Chakrabarti (born 1952), theoretical physicist and econophysicist
• Sanghamitra Bandyopadhyay (born 1968), computer scientist
• Sukumar Sen, historian of Bengali literature

Gallantry Awards winners

Ashoka Chakra

• Flight Lieutenant Suhas Biswas

Maha Vir Chakra

• Squadron Leader Madhavendra Banerji

Bankers and business people

• Amar Kumar Bera
• Lakshmi Narayan Mittal
• Ravi Modi ^[4]
• P. C. Bhattacharya, 7th Governor, Reserve Bank of India
• Aditya Vikram Birla
• Rama Prasad Goenka (RPG Group)
• Sanjiv Goenka
• Chandra Shekhar Ghosh (founder of Bandhan Bank)
• Radhe Shyam Agarwal
• Radhe Shyam Goenka
• Rajat Gupta (b. 1948)
• Nalini Ranjan Sarkar
• Mati Lall Seal
• Ellis Jacob (founder of Cineplex Entertainment)
• Tiny Rowland (chairman of Lonrho from 1962 to 1993)
• Prannoy Roy (b.1949)

Freedom fighters

• Sri Aurobindo
• Benoy Basu
• Khudiram Bose
• Rash Behari Bose
• Subhash Chandra Bose
• Jogesh Chandra Chattopadhyay
• Chittaranjan Das
• Jatindra Nath Das
• Bagha Jatin
• Badal Gupta
• Dinesh Gupta
• Bipin Chandra Pal
• Sudhamoy Pramanick
• Bidhan Chandra Roy
• Ashoke Kumar Sen
• Matangini Hazra
• Maulana Abul Kalam Azad
• Sisir Kumar Ghosh

Performing arts

Artists

• Gerry Judah
• Jamini Roy
• Sudip Roy
• Paritosh Sen
• Paresh Maity
• Anil Kumar Dutta
• Jogen Chowdhury
• Samir Roychoudhury
• Sukanta Basu
• Shanu Lahiri ^[5]
• Ganesh Pyne
• Devajyoti Ray
• William Laidlay

Directors

• Satyajit Ray, winner of Oscar for Lifetime Achievement in 1992 and considered among the greatest director of film history.
• Hrishikesh Mukherjee
• Bimal Roy
• Tapan Sinha
• Shakti Samanta
• Mrinal Sen
• Rituparno Ghosh
• Sujoy Ghosh
• Nitin Bose
• Buddhadeb Dasgupta
• Anik Dutta
• Kaushik Ganguly
• Ritwik Ghatak
• Gautam Ghose
• Srijit Mukherji
• Shiboprosad Mukherjee
• Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury
• Aparna Sen

Cinema actors

• Uttam Kumar, actor, singer, composer, producer, director and screenwriter
• Kaushik Ganguly, actor, director and screenwriter
• Koushik Sen, actor and TV personality
• Mithun Chakraborty, actor, dancer and TV personality
• Rabi Ghosh, actor and comedian
• Ranjit Mallick, actor
• Dhritiman Chaterji, actor
• Tapen Chatterjee, actor
• Barun Chanda
• Pahari Sanyal
• N. Viswanathan
• Chhabi Biswas
• Karuna Bannerjee
• Koel Mallick, actress and daughter of Ranjit Mallick
• Anil Chatterjee
• Arpita Chatterjee, actress and TV personality; wife of Prosenjit Chatterjee
• Subir Banerjee
• Roopa Ganguly
• Uma Dasgupta
• Saswata Chatterjee
• Tarun Kumar
• Anup Kumar
• Ashok Kumar
• Bhanu Bandopadhyay
• Biswajit Chatterjee, actor, producer, director and politician
• Prosenjit Chatterjee, actor, producer and TV personality; son of Biswajit Chatterjee
• Debashree Roy, actress, dancer, choreographer, animal rights activist and politician; ex-wife of Prosenjit Chatterjee
• Jahor Roy
• Kanan Devi
• Sagarika Mukherjee
• Swastika Mukherjee
• Razzak
• Dev, actor, singer, producer, screenwriter and politician
• Jeet, actor, producer and TV personality
• Ruma Guha Thakurta
• Tapas Paul
• Mahua Roy Choudhury
• Mirza Abbas Ali
• Suchitra Sen
• Antara Biswas, actress
• Aparna Sen, actress, filmmaker and scriptwriter
• Moonmoon Sen
• Riddhi Sen, actor
• Riya Sen, actress
• Raima Sen, actress
• Reema Sen, actress
• Omar Sani
• Victor Banerjee, actor
• Moushumi Chatterjee
• Parambrata Chatterjee
• Konkona Sen Sharma, actress and filmmaker
• Varsha Ashwathi
• Abhishek Chatterjee
• Tathagata Mukherjee
• Monali Thakur, singer and actress
• Yash Dasgupta, actor, producer and TV personality
• Bonny Sengupta, actor and politician
• Nusrat Jahan, actress, politician and former Miss Kolkata 2010; wife of Yash Dasgupta
• Mimi Chakraborty, actress, producer and politician
• Anirban Bhattacharya
• Sayani Gupta, actress
• Sayantani Ghosh, actress and TV personality
• Sayak Chakraborty
• Sulakshana Pandit, singer and actress
• Vijayta Pandit, singer and actress

Theatre figures

• Rudraprasad Sengupta, actor and director
• Sambhu Mitra, actor and director
• Girishchandra Ghosh father of Bengali theatre
• Chitra Sen
• Koushik Sen

Photographers

• Benu Sen
• Sunil Das
• Sunil Janah

Composers

• Jeet Ganguly
• Kabir Suman
• Salil Chowdhury
• Rahul Dev Burman
• Shashi Preetam
• Sachin Dev Burman
• Bappi Lahiri
• Shantanu Moitra
• Pritam
• Hemanta Mukhopadhyay
• Nachiketa Ghosh
• Sudhin Dasgupta
• Anupam Roy
• Anjan Dutt
• Jaimin Rajani
• Pankaj Mullick
• Anil Biswas
• Nachiketa Ghosh
• Shyamal Mitra

Hindustani classical singers/maestros

• Ustad Allauddin Khan
• Ustad Ali Akbar Khan
• Pandit Ravi Shankar
• Ananda Shankar
• Ustad Vilayat Khan
• Pandit Jasraj
• Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan
• Pandit Bhimsen Joshi
• Rashid Khan
• Naina Devi ^[6]
• Pandit Nikhil Banerjee
• Ustad Amjad Ali Khan
• Ustad Bahadur Khan
• Pandit Ajoy Chakraborty
• Kaushiki Chakraborty
• Anjan Chattopadhyay

Hindustani classical instrumentalists

• Jyoti Goho
• Sourabh Goho
• Partho Sarothy

Other singers

• Dwijendra Lal Roy
• Suprakash Chaki
• K. C. Dey
• Gauhar Jan
• Pankaj Mullick
• Kanan Devi
• Kanika Bandyopadhyay
• Suchitra Mitra
• Hemanta Kumar Mukhopadhyay
• Manabendra Mukhopadhyay
• Manna Dey
• Kishore Kumar
• Sandhya Mukhopadhyay
• Geeta Dutt
• Debabrata Biswas
• Begum Akhtar
• Usha Uthup
• Indrani Sen
• Ruma Guha Thakurta
• Swagatalakshmi Dasgupta
• Srikanta Acharya
• Anwesshaa
• Suman Chatterjee
• Sachin Dev Burman
• Anjan Dutt
• Rupam Islam
• Prashant Tamang
• Shayan Chowdhury Arnob

Contemporary Bollywood musicians

• Abhijeet Bhattacharya, playback singer
• Anupam Roy (b.1982), singer-songwriter
• Alka Yagnik (b. 1966), playback singer
• Arijit Singh (b. 1987), singer, music producer, recordist and music programmer
• Babul Supriyo (b. 1970), playback singer, live performer, television host, actor and politician
• Kumar Sanu (b. 1957), playback singer
• Pritam (b. 1971)
• Sagarika (b. 1970), playback singer and actress
• Shreya Ghoshal (b. 1984), playback singer
• Shaan (b. 1972), playback singer and actor

Dancers

Prominent dancers of the city include:

• Uday Shankar and his wife Amala Shankar
• Mamata Shankar
• Tanushree Shankar
• Ananda Shankar
• Sadhana Bose
• Sharmila Biswas ^[7]
• Shila Mehta, classical dance artist, choreographer, teacher, and composer
• Rani Karnaa
• Rajeswari Vaidyanathan, Tedx Speaker, trainer, performer and choreographer

Magicians

Kolkata is the magic capital of India and has produced internationally famous magicians and performers, including:

• P.C. Sorcar
• P.C. Sorcar, Jr.
• P.C. Sorcar, Young

Sports

• Norman Pritchard, track and field, Olympic medallist (1900)
• Richard James Allen, hockey, Olympic(1928, 1932, 1936)
• Leslie Claudius, hockey, Olympic medallist (1924, 1928, 1936)
• Gurbux Singh, hockey, Olympic medallist (1964, 1968)
• Vece Paes, hockey, Olympic medallist (1980)
• Leander Paes, tennis, Olympic medallist (1996)
• Sourav Ganguly, cricketer, former India national cricket team's captain, sports administrator, former BCCI president
• Chhanda Gayen, mountaineer, first Bengali woman to summit Mount Everest
• Pankaj Roy, cricketer
• Laxmi Ratan Shukla, cricketer
• Deep Dasgupta, cricketer
• Rohan Gavaskar, cricketer (son of Sunil Gavaskar)
• Manoj Tiwary, cricketer
• Ashok Dinda, cricketer
• Wriddhiman Saha, cricketer
• Mohammed Shami, cricketer
• Len Stubbs, former cricketer
• Chuni Goswami, footballer
• Gautam Sarkar, footballer
• Shailen Manna, footballer, former India national football team's captain (guided India to Gold medal in 1951 Asiad)
• Pradip Kumar Banerjee, footballer
• Krishanu Dey, footballer
• Sudip Chatterjee, footballer
• Subrata Pal, footballer
• Subhasish Roy Chowdhury, footballer
• Syed Rahim Nabi, footballer
• Mehtab Hossain, footballer
• Arnab Mondal, footballer
• Pronay Halder, footballer
• Pritam Kotal, footballer
• Narayan Das, footballer
• Subhasish Bose, footballer
• Mihir Sen, record swimmer
• Jyotirmoyee Sikdar, track and field
• Arjun Atwal, golfer
• Surya Shekhar Ganguly, chess grandmaster
• Dibyendu Barua, chess grandmaster
• Sandipan Chanda, chess grandmaster
• Deep Sengupta, chess grandmaster
• Gobar Guha, wrestler
• Manohar Aich, body builder, Mr. Universe 1952
• Dipu Ghosh, badminton, Arjuna Award
• Saurav Ghosal, squash player
• Jaidip Mukerjea, tennis player
• Jagmohan Dalmiya, sports administrator
• Pankaj Gupta, sports administrator
• John Holman, cricketer
• William Laidlay, cricketer
• Hira Mondal, Footballer

Nobel laureates

Six Nobel Prize winners have been associated with Kolkata:

• Sir Ronald Ross (1857–1932) – medicine, 1902
• Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) – literature, 1913; first Asian to win the Nobel Prize
• Mother Teresa (1910–1997) – peace, 1979
• Amartya Sen (born 1933) – economics, 1998
• Abhijit Banerjee (born 1961) – economics, 2019
• CV Raman – physics

Ramon Magsaysay Award winners

The Ramon Magsaysay Award, sometimes called "Asia's Nobel Prize", is given "to perpetuate his example of integrity in government, courageous service to the people, and pragmatic idealism within a democratic society." Kolkata winners include:

• Mother Teresa (1910–1997) – Peace and International Understanding, 1962
• Satyajit Ray (1921–1992) – Journalism, Literature, and the Creative Communication Arts, 1967
• Gour Kishore Ghosh (1923–2000) – Journalism, Literature, and the Creative Communication Arts, 1981
• Mahasweta Devi (1926–2016) – Journalism, Literature, and the Creative Communication Arts, 1997

Others

• Samik Bandyopadhyay (born 1940), critic of Indian art, theatre and film
• Tanmoy Bhattacharya (born 1958), politician
• William Carey (1761–1834), missioner and reformer
• Laksmikanta Roy Choudhury (1570–1649), Brahmin scholar, social and political figure
• Alexander Duff (1806—1878), missioner and reformer
• Manny Elias (born 1953), drummer, record producer; original drummer of the Tears for Fears
• David Hare (1775–1842), philanthropist and founder of many important and prestigious educational institutions of Kolkata
• Mohit Kumar (born 1992), fashion model and influencer ^[8]
• Rajendra Prasad (1884–1963), politician, the first president of India (from 1950 to 1962)
• Romita Ray (born 1970), art historian
• Radhika Roy (born 1948), journalist
• Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (born 1942), scholar, literary theorist, and feminist critic
• Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar (1820–1891), philosopher, academic, writer, translator, entrepreneur, social reformer and philanthropist; key figure of the Bengal Renaissance

References

1. naiya, Arijit; Anita Desai (2003). Calcutta: a cultural and literary history. Signal Books. p. xiv. ISBN   978-1-902669-59-5.
2. "Meet Our Team | Damascus Road Community Church". Damascus Road Community Church | Welcome. Retrieved 28 January 2019.
3. "Rajendra Pillai | Penguin Random House". PenguinRandomhouse.com. Retrieved 28 January 2019.
4. "The Untold Story Of How Ravi Modi Built Vedant Fashions—the Makers Of Manyavar—into A $3.5 Billion Behemoth". Forbes India. Retrieved 5 December 2024.
5. "Shanu Lahiri dead". The Telegraph (Calcutta). Archived from the original on 7 February 2013. Retrieved 15 March 2013.
6. "A Tale Of Two Women: In search of their own songs". The Telegraph. 11 March 2012. Archived from the original on 29 July 2014. Retrieved 6 June 2013.
7. "Katha Kavya Abhinaya". Sangeet Natak Akademi. 2011. Archived from the original on 27 September 2013. Retrieved 28 May 2013.
8. https://medium.com/@wearemojocreatives/mohit-kumar-fashion-model-of-kolkata-wins-male-model-of-the-year-west-bengal-2023-dce7214ffb6a