Manoj Kumar Pal earned his BSc (Hons) (1951), MSc (1953) and DPhil (1958) from Calcutta University. His specialization was in Theoretical Nuclear Physics. He served as the Director, Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, Kolkata.

Academic and Research Achievements: Manoj Pal's work include an explanation of the splitting of the giant dipole resonance in even excitation of nuclei like 12C, 16O, etc., in terms of a mixing of the spin-flip and no-spin-flip dipole states caused by the spin orbit coupling in nuclei, investigation of the nature of correlations between a neutron and a proton in medium heavy nuclei, study of effects of anharmonicity in two-phonon quadrupole states, study of effective two-body matrix elements of a realistic two-body potential in Hartree-Fock computations on s-d shell nuclei, computation up to the second order of the effective two-body matrix elements of the separable nonlocal Tabakin potential, study of core-polarisation effects in computing shell-model matrix elements explanation of the pairing vibration in terms of pairs of hole particle excitations of the effective two-body potential, using an alternative perturbation approach, calculation of the collective potential energy of the transitional nuclei accurately by making use of the Strutinsky method developed for the treatment of fission, study of shock-wave generated in heavy-ion heavy-ion collisions at supersonic incident velocity, study of the pairing inter-action in time dependent theory, calculation of magnetic moments of old mass nuclei including core-polarisation effects and meson exchange effects and development of the Adiabatic time-dependent Hartree-Fock theory. In addition to the research papers, Professor Pal authored a book on Theory of Nuclear Structure.

Awards and Honours: Pal is a Member of Indian Physics Association and was elected a Fellow of Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore.