Cancer from comics – Bengal researchers make art from science

From cancer to comics, scientist to artist, MIT to IIT – it’s been an unusual journey for Bengal boy Argha Manna, who spent a large part of his youth peering into microscopes, but later realized it was more fun to spread science through graphic art.

On Saturday (November 15, 2025), the trained biologist will conduct a workshop on History in Comic Art in the city, teaching enthusiasts how to research, reimagine and craft a visual story. “Art and science inspire each other and are very much connected. It was only in the 19th century that we separated them as subjects. From Leonardo da Vinci to William Turner, there were no boundaries. Da Vinci himself was a brilliant scientist and engineer,” said Mr Manna, 38. The Hindu,

“William Turner was a good friend of Michael Faraday, and many of his atmospheric watercolors were inspired by science (turner and scientist is one of my favorite books by James Hamilton). There are many examples in the history of mankind where the marriage between art and science has created new knowledge that has pushed humanity to the next level,” he said.

The boy, a resident of Liluah near Howrah, joined Kolkata’s Bose Institute as a research scholar on cancer biology in 2009, but dropped out of the program in 2015 without accepting the degree. The reason? That year was the 100th anniversary of Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity, and Science The magazine marked the occasion through comic art. “It’s kind of an ‘Aha!’ It was a moment for me. I wondered if any serious scientific magazine would like Science Could publish comic art, why couldn’t I? “I have found my true identity,” said the scientist-artist.

“But it didn’t happen immediately. As soon as I dropped out of the Bose Institute, I had to take up a job to pay my bills. I took up a job at Anand Bazaar Patrika as a journalist. I didn’t have good skills in drawing, but there I learned from principal illustrator Suman Chaudhary, which became my school. I did double shifts in the office for four years to learn art. In the morning, I was a journalist; in the evening I learned the techniques of cartooning, illustration and fine art,” he Said. Said.

It was while working in the newspaper that he started creating comic art on the history of science. Recalling his fascination with microscopy, he sought to critically interrogate in artwork how microscopy, as a tool, initiated a revolution in science.

In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, one of his comic artworks, Be careful of drops and bubblespublished in History of Internal MedicineHe garnered interest in the scientific community and soon thereafter, he earned a fellowship from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “That’s when my artistic career started taking shape. I got a call from MIT and I started working with Prof. Lidia Bourouiba on the history of disease transmission, focusing on airborne disease. I left the traditional way of publishing science and my project was to ask important questions and document paradigm shifts in disease transmission research through comics – graphic non-fiction,” said Mr. Manna.

By the end of 2022, a job offer from IIT Gandhinagar brought him back to India, but he also maintained his association with MIT, returning there every summer to work on a book project. Therefore, at present he has twin designations: Artist-in-Residence (IIT Gandhinagar) and Research Affiliate (MIT).

“During my PhD days, I loved observing what was going on at the microscopic level. I never thought that my love for images would draw me towards art. I deeply felt that nowadays science is becoming highly technical and the philosophical part is being ignored. I wanted to express scientific knowledge, the evolution of science and the history of science beyond academic settings,” Mr Manna summarized his work. “I don’t believe in unidirectional knowledge dissemination or monologue lectures. I’m imagining the workshop as a collaborative space in which we’ll dialogue, ask important questions, and create stories together.”