K. Rangachari

Born in September 1868, K. Rangachari was an Indian botanist and ethnologist whose work connected natural history with the study of people and culture. He taught botany at the agricultural college in Coimbatore and also worked with the Madras Museum, building a career that crossed academic and public institutions.

He is especially remembered as an editor and contributor to the seven-volume Castes and Tribes of Southern India, produced with Edgar Thurston. He also wrote on plant life, including a textbook on botany and A Handbook of Some South Indian Grasses, showing how closely his interests ranged from careful field observation to large reference works.

Rangachari died on May 10, 1934. Today, he is mainly read for the breadth of his documentation: part scientist, part compiler, and part guide to South Indian knowledge as it was being recorded in print during the late colonial period.