Dr. Kattungal Subrahmanyan Manilal, popularly known as K.S. Manilal, a renowned botanist and Padma Shri awardee, passed away on January 1 2025, at the age of 86 in Thrissur, Kerala. He was born on September 17, 1938 in the Kingdom of Cochin(now Kerala).
- In 2020, he was awarded the Padma Shri, India’s fourth-highest civilian honor, for his contributions in the field of science.
About Dr.K.S.Manilal:
i.K.S. Manilal was an Indian botany scholar, taxonomist, and a professor at the University of Calicut, Kerala.
- He dedicated nearly 35 years to researching, translating, and annotating the manuscript ‘Hortus Malabaricus’, bringing this ancient botanical treasure to the modern world.
ii.In 1971, as a Nuffield Foundation Fellow of the Royal Society, Dr. Manilal carried out botanical research in Britain.
iii.In 1989, he was the founding president of the Indian Association for Angiosperm Taxonomy (IAAT) at the Department of Botany, University of Calicut, Kozhikode, Kerala. He served as the chief editor of Reedia, the journal of the IAAT, from 1991.
- He also served as the president of the Botanical Society of India in 1999.
iv.He worked at renowned institutions, including the University of London, England; the University of North Wales, the United Kingdom(UK); the National Museum of Natural History(NMNH),Washington, DC, the United States of America(USA); the Royal Botanical Garden Rijks Herbarium in Washington, DC; and the University of Leiden, the Netherlands. He retired as Head of Botany department, Calicut University.
v.He introduced 19 new plant species to the scientific community, four of which are named after him.
vi.He has published over 200 research papers and authored or co-authored 15 books.
- His other notable works include Flora of Calicut (1982), Flora of Silent Valley (1988), Botany and History of Hortus Malabaricus (1980), An Interpretation of Van Rheede’s Hortus Malabaricus (1988), and Hortus Malabaricus and the Socio-Cultural Heritage of India (2012).
Awards:
i.He received the Vishwambhar Puri Medal (1990), the Y.D. Tyagi Gold Medal (1998), and the E.K. Janaki Ammal Taxonomy Award (2003) from the Ministry of Environment and Forests(MoEF), Government of India(GoI).
ii.He received international recognition with the Officer of the Order of Orange-Nassau award from the Netherlands, presented by Queen Beatrix in 2012, becoming the first Asian to receive this honor.
About Hortus Malabaricus:
i.Hortus Malabaricus (The Garden of Malabar) is a 17th-century Latin manuscript created by Dutch Governor Hendrik Adrian van Rheede.
ii.The 12-volume work, which documented the wide variety of medicinal plants in Kerala, had been nearly forgotten until Dr. Manilal’s thorough research brought it back to prominence.
iii.It was published in Amsterdam between 1678 and 1693.
iv.Manilal’s translations of the monumental work were published in English in 2003 and in Malayalam in 2008, making it accessible to both researchers and the public.
