World’s renowned Primatologist and Environmentalist Professor Dr S M Mohnot passed away after a protracted illness at Jodhpur yesterday.
Eighty-three year old Dr Mohnot was also founder and director of School of Desert Sciences (SDS) and Head of Zoology Department of Jai Narayan Vyas University from 1964 to 2001.
Dr Mohnot active till recently has made a huge contribution in research, writing books, and making deliberations at the world forum on Jodhpur’s Hanuman Langurs (monkey) which are known in the world now. Mohnot while staying in Germany worked on marmosets, the smallest of all living primates and developed a long range programme on langurs and came out with a sociological hypothesis on langurs in the wilderness. Germans, American and Canadian scholars have done their research and Ph.D. under his guidance at the SDS.
He who always stressed the need of developing a world class international Centre for primates at Jodhpur and to give a national character to develop centre of excellence for primates has established a National Primate Museum and also a breeding centre to meet the demand of quality primates for variety of research and studies.
Dr Mohnot did the ground work on the western Rajasthan’s environmental issues and stone mining hazards along with late Anil Agarwal, founder of the Centre for Science and Environment, a Delhi-based research institute presently run by Sunita Narain.
Among dozens of other books authored by S M Mohnot, three main books : Current Primate Researches, Primates of South Asia, and Environmental Degradation in Western Rajasthan received a world acclaim. __SNS