Lalon Shah (c. 1774–1890), the Baul mystic of Cheuriya in Kushtia, sang that God lives not in temple or mosque but in the human heart — and refused to the end to say whether he was born Hindu or Muslim. His songs remain the soul of Bengal's Baul tradition.
Muhammad Shahidullah (1885–1969), Dhaka University's great philologist, traced the origins of the Bengali language, edited its oldest texts and, in 1947, made the first scholarly case for Bangla as a state language of Pakistan — the intellectual foundation of the Language Movement.
Read MorePrafulla Chandra Ray (1861–1944), born in Raruli in present-day Khulna district, was the Bengali chemist who founded India's first modern chemistry research school and Bengal Chemicals, its first pharmaceutical company. Known as Acharya, he discovered mercurous nitrite, wrote the History of Hindu Chemistry and gave away his salary to his students.
Read MoreS. M. Sultan, the mason's son from Narail known in his village as Lal Mia, turned his back on the art schools and gallery capitals of three continents to paint from a house on the Chitra River. What he painted there — the farmers of Bengal with the bodies of giants — made him one of the founders of modern Bangladeshi art.
Read MoreFerdousi Priyabhashini (1947–2018) was a self-taught Bangladeshi sculptor who made art from driftwood, roots and discarded natural material — and the first woman to publicly announce herself as a Birangona, breaking decades of silence about the women assaulted during the Liberation War. She received the Independence Award in 2010 and was gazetted a freedom fighter in 2016.
Read MoreSyed Shamsul Haque was the "sabyasachi" — the ambidextrous writer — of Bengali literature, a master of poetry, the novel, the verse play, translation and the film script alike. From the Liberation War drama Payer Awaj Pawa Jay to the scandalous Khelaram Khele Ja, his six-decade career carried him from a wartime BBC microphone to the Bangla Academy Award, Ekushey Padak and Independence Award.
Read MoreAl Mahmud (1936–2019), born Mir Abdus Shukur Al Mahmud in Brahmanbaria, was the poet of Sonali Kabin — a Language Movement schoolboy who became an editor, a prisoner, an academy director, and the most debated Bengali poet of his generation. This profile follows the whole arc, from the 1952 leaflet that brought him an arrest warrant to the posthumous Independence Award of 2025.
Read MoreShah Abdul Karim (1916–2009) was a poor farmer's son from Ujan Dhol village in Sunamganj who became the Baul Samrat — the Baul King — of Bengal. With his ektara and more than 1,500 songs, including the communal-harmony anthem "Age Ki Sundor Din Kataitam", he carried the mystic philosophy of the haor wetlands to the whole of Bangladesh, receiving the Ekushey Padak in 2001.
Read MoreDr Zafrullah Chowdhury (1941–2023), freedom fighter and founder of Gonoshasthaya Kendra, gave Bangladesh its village paramedics, its landmark 1982 National Drug Policy and a model of healthcare for the poor studied around the world — a life honoured with the Ramon Magsaysay Award, the Right Livelihood Award and, uniquely, two Independence Awards.
Read MoreMunier Chowdhury (1925–1971), Dhaka University playwright who wrote Kabar in a prison cell in 1953 and was killed in the massacre of 14 December 1971.
Read MoreZahir Raihan (1935–1972): the novelist and filmmaker behind Jibon Theke Neya and Stop Genocide, whose 1972 disappearance in Dhaka remains unsolved to this day.
Read MoreTareque Masud, the Cinema Feriwalla: from a Faridpur madrasa childhood to Matir Moina's Cannes prize, Muktir Gaan, and the 2011 crash that ended Kagojer Phul.
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