Amarnath Jha (1897–1955), son of the Sanskritist Sir Ganganath Jha and born into a Maithil Shrotriya family of Sarisab-Pahi, was widely regarded as the ablest professor of English literature in the India of his day. Made Head of the Department of English at the University of Allahabad at just thirty-two, he went on to serve as Vice-Chancellor of both Allahabad and the Banaras Hindu University.
A teacher of legendary range and an arbiter of literary taste, he was among the first recipients of the Padma Bhushan (1954) and helped shape institutions from the National Defence Academy committee to the Bihar Public Service Commission. With his father, he gave Mithila one of its rare father-and-son lines of national scholarly eminence.