Followed by the discovery of Vibrio cholerae in 1884 by Robert Koch, many works have been carried out all over the world to answer many questions related with its pathogenesis and mode of transmission in causing outbreaks.

The seminal works of De in Calcutta (now, Kolkata), during 1950–60 breached several qualms pertaining to the enteric toxin produced by bacteria including V. cholerae and Escherichia coli.

van Heyningen, professor emeritus, University of Oxford, UK, and John R. Seal, former scientific director, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Bethesda, note that De’s paper “deserves to go down as a classic in the history of cholera, and, indeed, as later developments have shown, in the history of cellular physiology and biochemistry.” Thanks to De’s discovery of the cholera enterotoxin, research has been redirected to find a vaccine that will spark the immune system to fight the enterotoxin specifically, rather than the bacteria.

As noted by John Craig, State University of New York Health Science Center at Brooklyn, De’s work was truly creative and novel, and it “forever altered our concepts surrounding the pathogenesis of secretory diarrhoea.” These famous findings came out from the work he carried out at the Nilratan Sircar Medical College, Calcutta Medical College and Bose Institute, Kolkata in extremely modest laboratory settings.

Using research methodology that was very simple, easy to perform and inexpensive, he set the highest standards of excellence in novel experimental design and execution.

he is also an examplar and inspiration for a boldness of challenge to the established wisdom, a style of thought that should be more aggressively taught by example as well as precept.” And yet De was never elected a fellow of any Indian academy and never received any major award.

Indeed as Professor Padmanabhan Balaram pointed out in an editorial in Current Science, "De died in 1985 unhonoured and unsung in India's scientific circles.

That De received no major award in India during his lifetime and our Academies did not see it fit to elect him to their Fellowships must rank as one of the most glaring omissions of our time.

De emerges, in retrospect, as a modest self-effacing scientist driven by inner compulsions to grapple with a major scientific problem of the time.

De's heroic story of persistence, dedication and achievement should serve as an inspiration to the many who are increasingly bewildered by the current fashion of mega projects, surrounded by fanfare and publicity and most often surprisingly little discernible scientific output.”