Gilbert John Fowler

Gilbert John Fowler (23 January 1868 – 21 March 1953) was a British biochemist who worked on pollution, decomposition and sewage treatment in Britain and later in India where he established the first research laboratory in biochemistry at the Indian Institute of Science at Bangalore.

[1] He established the earliest ideas for the activated sludge process of sewage treatment by examining bacterial growth and noting their oxygen requirement.

His major advance was in noting the need of oxygen by bacteria and he found that the removal of sludge from sewage was counterproductive to decomposition.

He was a regular visitor to India from 1906 and became a permanent resident in 1916 after taking up position as a Professor of Applied Chemistry at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore.

He also examined shellac production, conducting experiments, growing lac in the Doresanipalya forest in Bangalore in collaboration with Leslie Coleman, Syed Mahdihassan (1892-1992) and others.