Atmaram Pandurang

Atmaram Pandurang or Atmaram Pandurang Tarkhadkar (or just Turkhad in English publications) (1823-1898) was an Indian physician and social reformer who founded the Prarthana Samaj and was one of the two Indian co-founders (the other being Sakharam Arjun) of the Bombay Natural History Society. A graduate of Grant Medical College, he was a brother of Dadoba Pandurang (9 May 1814-17 October 1882), a scholar of Sanskrit and Marathi. Atmaram Pandurang served briefly as sheriff of Bombay in 1879.

Atmaram Pandurang was a theistic reformer who opposed many Hindu traditions including child marriage. He believed that the minimum age for marriage of girls should be twenty. The Prarthana Samaj was founded at his home on 31 March 1867 and was influenced by Keshab Chunder Sen.

Pandurang belonged to a highly educated family and his circle of acquaintances included reformists from across the country. When Rabindranath Tagore was to visit England in 1878, he stayed in their Bombay home and sought to improve his English with the assistance of Pandurang's second daughter Annapurna or Ana. It is believed that the two were attracted to each other and Tagore wrote several poems in her memory (he referred to her as "Nalini"). Ana Turkhud however married Harold Littledale, professor of history and English literature at Baroda on November 11, 1880. Ana's older brother Moreshwar Atmaram obtained a gold medal in Practical Chemistry and obtained honours in mathematics and geology at University College London in 1867 and was a vice-principal at Rajkumar College in Baroda. Another daughter Manek Turkhud passed the Licensiate of Medicine and Surgery from Bombay in 1892. In the same year, the daughter of Dadabhai Naoroji, Maneckbai also passed the same examination.

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