Science for the Odia Public

Abstract

Writings on science subjects, directed at the public have been a regular feature of modern Odia literature which began taking shape during the 1850’s. This article attempts to document such writings between 1850 and 1950 and to present an overview of their number, content and authors. A search through the available printed material, mostly periodicals, of this time interval yielded 765 articles which were contributed by about 100 different authors. The articles showed wide variance with respect to their length, content and style. The writings were distributed among various periodicals (672 articles), collected works (35), and two works of reference (58). The combined length of the 765 articles is about 6,00,000 words and these were supplemented with numerous illustrations and several tables. An illustrative list of 80 selected articles is given with this article along with brief summaries of their contents with a view to helping the readers appreciate their diversity. Tables giving the distribution of the articles according to the time period of publication and according to their length are included. Tabulation of authors and the number of articles written by each has been made to identify the more prolific authors.