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St. John’s College and its Chemistry Department
St. John’s College, Agra was founded in 1850 by the Church Missionary Society (CMS) of England through the efforts of the Agra CMS Association which came into being
in 1850. Today the College has 16 post-graduate departments with research facilities and 2 under-graduate departments organized under 3 faculties: Arts, Commerce and Science. It is a coeducational institution with women-men ratio of 45:55. Its other curricular activities include B.Ed., vocational courses, IGNOU study centre and teaching of Indian languages. Its co-curricular activities include sports, clubs and academic societies of different departments, NCC, NSS, NSO, moral and religious education etc.
It can boast of having one of the most beautiful buildings in Agra, built in red sandstone in Indo-Saracenic architecture. It is a government aided college. It is a NAAC accredited institution, and University Grants Commission, New Delhi has conferred the status of ‘A College with Potential for Excellence’.
Department of Chemistry was established in 1913. It was raised to status of PG Department in 1925. Its doctoral program was initiated in 1940. It has had the honour of being served by able teachers and researchers trained in premier institutes such as
IIT, CDRI, Cambridge, Oxford
etc. Today it is a FIST sponsored department. It has 12 faculty members who are contributing in their own way in the steady expansion and progress of teaching and research. Various research projects funded by DST, CSIR, CST, UGC and other agencies have been and are being carried out by the department. About 100 scholars have been awarded Ph.D. and 30 are enrolled presently. Various fields of research carried out are chemotherapy, dyes, tertiary aromatic amines, heterocyclic compounds, Ayurvedic bhasmas, drug designing for antibacterial, antifungal and antimalarial activity, complexes of Schiffs bases, kinetics and colloids, electrode kinetics and co-ordination chemistry by polarography, metallic soaps, noise pollution, metals/anions/pesticides/surfactants in air/water/soil samples, materials for water purification etc.
The department is equipped with sophisticated analytical instruments such as HPLC, GC, AAS, FTIR, UV-Vis spectrophotometer etc.
Over 400 research papers have been published by its faculty and scholars in reputed national and international journals.
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