The Full Form of DSIR is‍ Department of Scientific and Industrial Research.

The Department of Scientific and Industrial Research was a department of the British Government responsible for the organisation, development, and encouragement of scientific and industrial research. At the outbreak of the First World War “Britain found … it was dangerously dependent on enemy industries”.^[1] At the request of the Board of Trade, the Board of Education prepared a White Paper under the chairmanship of Sir William McCormick.^[2] The DSIR was set up to fill the roles that the White Paper specified: “to finance worthy research proposals, to award research fellowships and studentships [in universities], and to encourage the development of research associations in private industry and research facilities in university science departments. [It] rapidly assumed a key role in coordinating government aid to university research.^[3] It maintained these roles until 1965. The annual budget during its first year, 1915, was £1,000,000.

The Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (D.S.I.R.) was established in 1916 and, in June 1917, the Cold Storage and Ice Association sent a deputation to the Department’s Advisory Council, stating that thousands of tons of food were lost annually by decay before they could be marketed, and urging the national importance of research by Government on the preservation of foodstuffs. The Council agreed to consider the matter, and in October a report was prepared and presented by the late Sir William Hardy (then Mr W. B. Hardy, Secretary of the Royal Society and Secretary of the Society’s Food (War) Committee), and three other Fellows of the Society, the late Professors W. M. Bayliss, J. B. Farmer and Gowland Hopkins. A Research Director and a Research Board were recommended and appointed, the terms of reference of the Board being `To organize and control research into the preparation and preservation of foods’. The decision thus taken implied that the work to be done was considered to belong broadly to the class of national researches better conducted by the State than by industry with Government assistance.

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