The cultural history of a nation, unlike the customary mainstream history, has a larger time-frame and encompasses the timeless ethos of a society undergirding the course of events and vicissitudes. A major key to the understanding of a society’s unique character is an appreciation of the far-reaching contributions by outstanding personalities of certain periods – especially in the realms of scholarship, literature, and the arts. In this perspective, the present volume—adapted into English from the original Kannada—comprising biographical pen-portraits of some eminent personalities who strode the intellectual firmament of Karnataka in the mid-twentieth century is a humble offering addressed to new-generation readers.