Professor Percival, Mathematics Professor, Presidency College

This is by no means an exhaustive translation of all there is on Percival. I just chose this bit for its anecdotal richness

One hardly saw Professor Percival ever laugh in class. Sometimes, while teaching Shakespearean Comedy, a glimmer of a smile would appear. His attentive students would  right away mark that passage as  one that had elicited a hint of a smile from the Professor! 

Professor Percival once went on a two week holiday to Darjeeling. He took a supply of books with him. However, he had to come back only after spending twelve days, there. The reason for the unscheduled return was that he ran out of books. He had not calculated right how many books he might be able to read when he didn’t have his normal teaching responsibilities!

Presidency College and Rabindranath: Rabindra Parishad, Bankim Sharat Committee (62)

Even if it was for a day, Rabindranath was a student of this college. Although it hasn’t been possible to recover the exact date, it was probably a day in either 1877 or 1878. At the Calcutta University Convocation, held on the grounds of Presidency College in February 1937, the poet himself referred to the occasion:

In the early years of my life, my brief apprentice in the august halls of Learning, were spent in its bottom most rungs.  Later on in my youth, at the behest of my elders, I ventured into the First Class of Presidency College. This one day did not lead to a second one. The minute my classmates saw me, there was such an outbreak of laughter that I was fully convinced that there was a basic mismatch between them and I. 

However, although his formal link with the college was only one day, later on in his life, the poet visited the college a significant number of times, and delivered  lectures. The first time was on the 17^th of September, 1917, on the invitation of the Chaatra Sansad  (translation?). This lecture was published in the second volume of the college magazine in the fourth year of its publication.  The next time was just before his journey to Peru in 1924, on the eve of Peru’s 100 years of independence. This lecture delivered on September 10, was held at the Physics Lecture Theatre, was later published in Samhati, 1301, Bhadra, and in Atmashakti in its 1301, Ashwin number.  It was also partially included in the fourteenth volume (pages 1004—5) of the Rabindra Rachanavali (Complete Works) that was brought out during the time of his 100^th birth anniversary. [Most likely this is the Viswa Bharati edition of the Collected Works/Rachanavali, that is being referred to]

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