Dr. Vishwa Gopal Jhingran obtained his P.h.D from Stanford University, California, in 1948. He made significant contributions to the development of new concepts of aquaculture. His work on composite fish culture in freshwater and prawn and mullet culture in brackish waters was a major breakthrough in inland aquaculture in India. He has also made a significant contribution to the age and growth studies of Cirrhinus mrigala, an Indian major carp. He has worked on the problem of depletion of fisheries of Chilka Lake, which led to the formulation of clear cut measures for the development of fisheries of the lake. Dr. Jhingran has helped raise the productivity of fish in experimental aquaculture operations in ponds, which provided a practical method of boosting the country's inland fish production. He developed the technology for composite fish culture technique named "Aquaplosion". He was the President of the Inland Fisheries Society of India. He was an elected fellow of the National Academy of Sciences of India in 1969 and a Fellow of the Zoological Society of India in 1970. Dr. Jhingran received Padma Shri Award in 1977. He was awarded the Rafi Ahmed Kidwai Memorial Award for outstanding contribution fish culture in 1972.

Pabitra Kumar Maitra obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Calcutta in 1959. At the Johnson Research Foundation for Medical Physics, University of Pennsylvania, USA, he worked on the metabolism of glucose and ethanol in diverse systems. His significant contribution was on the pathways of glucose dissimilation in the S. Olivaceous. He did breakthrough research in yeast biochemical genetics. He isolated and characterized structural and regulatory mutations affecting all the enzymes of the glycolytic pathway of yeast. He served as the Professor of Molecular Biology at TIFR, Mumbai; Emeritus Scientist at IIT, Mumbai; and Visiting Professor at Agharkar Research Institute, Pune. Dr. Maitra was awarded the Jagdish Chandra Bose Medal in 1992.