Prafulla Chandra Ray was born in the village of Raruli-Katipara, then in Jessore District (now Dighalia, Khulna), in the eastern region of the Bengal Presidency of British India (now Bangladesh) to a Bengali Hindu family.

He was the third child and son of Harish Chandra Raychowdhury (d. 1893), a Kayastha zamindar and his wife Bhubanmohini Devi (d. 1904), the daughter of a local taluqdar.

After succeeding to his father's post, Ray's grandfather Anandlal, a progressive man, sent his son Harish Chandra to receive a modern education at Krishnagar Government College.

[5] At the college, Harish Chandra received a thorough grounding in English, Sanskrit and Persian, though he was ultimately forced to end his studies to help support his family.

After recovering from an illness, Ray moved to Calcutta in 1876 and was admitted to the Albert School, established by the Brahmo reformer Keshub Chandra Sen; owing to his concentrated self-study over the preceding two years, his teachers found him to have advanced much further than the rest of the students in his assigned class.

The English literature teacher at the Institution was Surendranath Banerjee, the prominent Indian nationalist and future president of the Indian National Congress, whose passionately held ideals, including an emphasis on the value of service and the need to continually strive for India's rejuvenation, left a definite and lasting impression on Ray, who took those values to heart.

As the Metropolitan Institution offered no facilities for science courses at the time, Ray attended physics and chemistry lectures as an external student at the Presidency College.

[7] He was especially drawn to the chemistry courses taught by Alexander Pedler, an inspiring lecturer and experimentalist who was among the earliest research chemists in India.

[2] His passion for experimentation led him to set up a miniature chemistry laboratory at a classmate's lodgings and reproducing some of Pedler's demonstrations; on one occasion, he narrowly escaped injury when a faulty apparatus exploded violently.

[2] He passed the FA exam in 1881 with a second division, and was admitted to the BA (B-course) degree of the University of Calcutta as a chemistry student, with a view towards pursuing higher studies in the field.

[7] Ray's essay was widely publicised in Britain, with The Scotsman observing "It contains information in reference to India which will not be found elsewhere, and is deserving of the utmost notice.

"[7] The following year, Ray published his paper as a booklet entitled "Essay on India," which likewise earned its author wide attention in British political circles.

Following an extensive review of available inorganic chemistry literature, Ray decided to explore the specific natures of structural affinities in double salts as the subject of his thesis.

Prior to Ray's taking up the problem, in 1886, Percival Spencer Umfreville Pickering and Emily Aston had concluded in their paper that double-double and higher-order sulfate salts did not exist as definite structures, deeming Vohl's experimental findings inexplicable.

"[9] Ray was awarded the Hope Prize which allowed him to work on his research for a further period of one year after completion of his doctorate.

[14] Prafulla Chandra, in 1896, noticed the formation of a yellow crystalline solid with the reaction of excess mercury and dilute nitric acid.

He proved that the pure ammonium nitrite is indeed stable by bring to pass a lot of experiments and explained then it can be sublimed even at 60 °C without decomposition.

On 15 August 1912 Nature magazine published the news of 'ammonium nitrite in tangible form' and the determination of the vapour density of 'this very fugitive salt'.

[11] P C Ray was a staunch nationalist who had observed the deterioration that Indian society had undergone due to suppression by the British.