Rajat Kanta Ray (1946–2025): The Last of the Mohicans

An obituary is anecdotal, loosely based on certain direct moments and their impacts, both immediate and long term, for the one who recollects. Like many, my memory of Professor Rajat Kanta Ray is immediate as one of his students, and long term in my later academic pursuits. Without exception, attending Rajat Ray’s lectures in Presidency College was, for many, the major driving force to remain in academia. Now, writing something like an obituary of an academician par excellence whose body of work is a constant source of intellectual sustenance cannot be confined to personal moments within or outside the classroom but to highlight the scholarship and legacies he created and endured.