Nirmal Kumar Dutta (1913–1982) was an Indian pharmacologist, medical academic and the director of Haffkine Institute, Mumbai.

[4][note 1] N. K. Dutta, born on 1 December 1913 in the Indian state of West Bengal, did his graduate studies in medicine at Calcutta Medical College of the University of Calcutta and after earning an MBBS, moved to Oxford University for his higher studies from where he secured a DPhil in 1949.

[7] He also developed a methodology for the evaluation of vaccines and antiserum and was known to have proposed therapeutic protocols for treating cholera.

[10][11][12][13] Dutta was associated with the World Health Organization, serving as a member of their Experts' Panel in Bacterial Diseases and Cholera.

[14] In between, the Indian National Science Academy elected him as a fellow in 1963; INSA would honor him again with the Shree Dhanwantari Prize in 1981.