Anil Kakodkar

Born - 11 November 1943
Achievements - Dr Anil Kakodkar is a famous Indian nuclear scientist. Currently, he's the chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission of India (AECI) and the Secretary to the Government of India, Department of Atomic Energy. He was also the director of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre at Trombay.

Dr Anil Kakodkar is a very distinguished nuclear scientist of India. He is presently the chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission of India (AECI) as well as the Secretary to the Government of India, Department of Atomic Energy. He was the director of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre at Trombay from the year 1996-2000 before being granted the opportunity of leading India's nuclear programme. Read on more about the biography of Anil Kakodkar.

Anil Kakodkar was born on 11 November 1943 in the Barawani village located in the present day Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. He's the son of Mrs Kamala Kakodkar & Mr. P. Kakodkar, both of whom happen to be Gandhian freedom fighters. His early education happened here and at Khargoan. After this, Anil Kakodkar went away to Bombay to pursue his post-matriculation studies. He graduated from the Ruparel College there.

Kakodkar then joined VJTI in Bombay University in 1963 to obtain a degree in Mechanical Engineering. In the year 1964, Anil Kakodkar joined the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC). He also notched a masters degree in experimental stress analysis from the University of Nottingham in the year 1969. The life history of Anil Kakodkar's career as nuclear scientist further saw him join the Reactor Engineering Division of the BARC.

Anil Kakodkar also has the credit of being a member of the core team of architects of India's Peaceful Nuclear Tests that were conducted during the years 1974 and 1998. He also led the indigenous development of the country's Pressurised Heavy Water Reactor Technology. Anil Kakodkar's efforts in the rehabilitation of the two reactors at Kalpakkam and the first unit at Rawatbhatta is noteworthy as it were about to close down.

In the year 1996, Anil Kakodkar became the youngest Director of the BARC after Homi Bhabha himself. From the year 2000 onwards, he has been leading the Atomic Energy Commission of India and playing secretary to the Department of Atomic Energy. Dr Anil Kakodkar has been playing a crucial part in demanding sovereignty for India's nuclear tests. Infact, he is known for being a strong advocate of India's self-reliance by employing Thorium as a fuel for nuclear energy.

G. N. Ramachandran

Born On: October 8, 1922
Born In: Kerala, India
Died On: July 4, 2001
Occupation: Scientist
Nationality: Indian

Gopalasamudram Narayana Iyer Ramachandran, popularly referred to as G. N. Ramachandran surely must be included in the list of one of the best scientists that 20th century India had produced. The best known work of G. N. Ramachandran till date is the Ramachandran plot, which the scientist had conceived along with Viswanathan Sasisekharan, to understand the structure of peptides. G. N. Ramachandran was the first scientist to suggest a triple-helical model of collagen structure. G. N. Ramachandran also made important contributions in the field of biology in the length of his career as a scientist.

Early Life & Education
G. N. Ramachandran was born on October 8, 1922 in the small town of Ernakulam in the south Indian state of Kerala in India. His forefathers were natives of the Gopalasamudram village situated in the Tirunelveli district of Tamil Nadu. In the year 1942, Ramachandran came to Bangalore to seek admission in the Indian Institute of Science. He became a student of the electrical engineering department of the institution, but later switched over to the physics department, realizing that he was more interested in physics than engineering. He completed his master’s degree in Physics in the year 1942 and subsequently enrolled as a thesis student at IISc under the guidance of Nobel Prize winning physicist Sir C V Raman.

Ramachandran opted to specialize in crystal physics and crystal optics in his thesis paper and obtained his doctorate degree from Bangalore in the year 1947. Ramachandran migrated to England after the completion of his DSc from Bangalore and spent two years from 1947 to 1949 at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge. He chose the subject of X-Ray diffuse scattering and its use to determine the elastic constant as his research subject in Cambridge under professor William Alfred Wooster, one of the best crystallographers of the 20th century world. Having made his own focusing mirror for an X-Ray microscope during his study years in Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, further studies in the field of X-Ray was a natural choice of research for Ramachandran.

Scientific Research
After completing his PhD in two years, Ramachandran returned to India and joined his alma mater the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore in the year 1949 as the assistant professor of Physics. His subject of interest as teacher remained crystal physics. In the year 1952, Ramachandran joined the Madras University as the head of its Physics department. Here, he shifted from crystal physics to biological macromolecules within a few months of joining. In the year 1954, Ramachandran completed his research work with Gopinath Kartha and made known through a published article the triple helical structure of collagen. His next project was to observe the different polypeptide conformations for assessing the structure of peptides.

Ramachandran continued with this research work till the year 1962. The following year, he published his reports in 1963 in the Journal of Molecular Biology, a study which is famously referred to as the Ramachandran Plot today. Thereafter, this ace scientist spent many a years after publishing the Ramachandran Plot in examining the conformation of peptides. Therefore, it may be rightly concluded that G N Ramachandran’s research contributed to the development of molecular biophysics, correlating the concepts of X-Ray crystallography, peptide synthesis, physico-chemical experimentation, NMR and additional optical studies. G N Ramachandran set up a molecular biophysics unit in the Center of Advanced Study in Biophysics at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore in 1970.

The following year, Ramachandran quit the Madras University to join IISc in Bangalore yet again. The chief reason for his resignation was the drop in the standards of Madras University as an educational institution. The succession of N. D. Sundaravadvelu in place of A. L. Mudaliar as vice chancellor of Madras University had resulted in the deterioration of the institute’s standards. From 1971, Ramachandran was involved in the research of convolution-backprojection algorithms in the field of X-Ray tomography, along with fellow scientist A. V. Lakshminarayana. The algorithms suggested by Ramachandran and Lakshminarayana were successful in more numerically correct images and also saved time on computer processing for image reconstruction. The research was published in a paper the same year.

Awards and Recognition
G. N. Ramachandran was a loved and respected scientist during his tenure both in IISc, Bangalore and Madras University. Some awards which he received for his scientific contributions are:

• Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award for contribution in the field of Physics in India in 1961.
• Fellowship of the Royal Society of London.
• Ewald Prize from the International Union of Crystallography for his outstanding contribution to crystallography in the year 1999.

Later Life
G. N. Ramachandran spent a sad and despondent personal life during his last years. The death of his wife Rajalakshmi in the year 1998 left him very lonely. His health gradually deteriorated. A few years before his death in 2001, G. N. Ramachandran suffered a massive stroke, after which he never fully recovered, contracting Parkinson’s disease the same year. G. N. Ramachandran died on July 4, 2001 at his residence in Bangalore. He was 79 years of age at the time of death.

Timeline
1922: G N Ramachandran was born on October 8.
1942: Became a student of the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore.
1942: Completed his master’s degree in Physics from IISc.
1947: Completed the DSc degree, his thesis paper under Sir C V Raman.
1947: Went to Cambridge for PhD.
1949: Returned from Cambridge to join as assistant professor of Physics in IISc, Bangalore.
1952: Joined Madras University as head of Physics department.
1954:  Proposed and published triple helical structure of collagen.
1963: The Ramachandran Plot was published.
1970: Set up the molecular biophysics unit at the IISc, Bangalore.
1971: Quit Madras University to join IISc, Bangalore again.
1971: Study on convolution-backprojection algorithms in X-Ray tomography was published.
1998: His wife Rajalakshmi passed away.
2001: Ramachandran breathed his last on July 4.

Harish-Chandra

Born On: October 11, 1923
Born In: Kanpur
Died On: October 16, 1983
Career: Mathematician
Nationality: Indian

For those who quiver at the thought of calculations and numerical deductions, unless when counting money, mathematics can be the equivalent of hell on earth. And for such 'math atheists' a mathematician like Harish Chandra can very well seem like a mirage. Harish Chandra is one amongst those few people who often change tracks in their career and yet reach a glorious destination. Yes, he was a genius who studied theoretical physics but decided to build a career pursuing higher mathematics as he felt that he didn't have the "mysterious sixth sense which one needs in order to succeed in physics". And higher mathematics, as anyone will tell, is that jumble of confusion where alphabets are used more than numbers, X and Y being particularly favorite. In a career spanning to three decades, Harish Chandra had worked with some of the best mathematical minds of this age and whose work in representation theory brought it from the periphery of mathematics to its center stage. Unarguably, he is the second greatest modern mathematician, after Ramanujan, of India.

Childhood
Harish Chandra Mehrotra was born in Kanpur, then known as Cawnpore in British India, to Chandrakishore Mehrotra, a civil engineer and Satyagati Seth, the daughter of a wealthy lawyer. He spent most of his childhood at his maternal grandfather's house where he received his early schooling at home from a tutor. He also learnt dancing and music. He was brilliant in his studies, but was prone to frequent illness and both these aspect of his childhood continued throughout his life. At the age of nine, Harish Chandra was enrolled in a private school and then completed his intermediate schooling from the Scindia School. He joined the University of Allahabad to study theoretical physics in which he proved to be a brilliant student. According to an interesting anecdote when C.V Raman was an examiner at the University, Harish Chandra solved the only question of the acoustic paper, which was on the theory of vibration of the mridangam, on the spot. He was given 100% marks by a highly impressed C.V Raman. Harish Chandra was influenced to study physics after reading the Principles of Quantum Mechanics by Paul Dirac. In 1941, he completed his B. Sc and received his Masters Degree in 1943. He then moved to the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bangalore as a postgraduate research fellow under Homi Bhabha to work on problems in theoretical physics. As a research fellow, Harish Chandra published several research papers along with Bhabha, the first being 'On the Theory of Point Particles' in 1944.

Early Work
In 1945, Harish Chandra was selected as a research student under Paul Dirac and so moved to the University of Cambridge. In Cambridge, he became a lifelong friend of Wolfgang Pauli when during a lecture by the famous physicist, he pointed out a mistake. It was at Cambridge that Harish Chandra became more and more interested in Mathematics. In 1947, after obtaining his Ph. D he moved to the USA, where Dirac was teaching in the Institute of Advanced Studies at Princeton University. At Princeton, he worked as Dirac's assistant. His early influence in mathematics was triggered by the works of Hermann Weyl, Emil Artin and Claude Chevalley who were working at Princeton and subsequently, moved over to mathematics.

As A Mathematician
In 1949, Harish Chandra moved to Harvard and in 1950 he shifted to Colombia University, where he worked as a faculty member. It was in Colombia University during the period 1950 to 1963 that he carried out research on 'semisimple lie groups' which were considered to be his best research. It was also during this period that he studied the 'discrete series representations of semisimple Lie groups' as his special area. He also worked with Armand Borel with whom he founded the theory of arithmetic groups and collaborated numerous papers on finite group analogues. Harish Chandra is also known for enunciating a precursor of the Langlands Philosophy known as 'Philosophy of Cusp Forms'. While still affiliated to Cambridge, he worked at the Tata Institute in Bombay from 1952 to 1953 and then at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton from 1955 to 1956 and as a Guggenheim Fellow in Paris in 1957 to 1958. In 1961, he awarded the Sloan Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study and worked there till 1963. Thereafter, he went back to the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton till he was appointed the IBM von Neumann professor in 1968 and served till his death.

Awards And Legacy
Harsh Chandra received many prestigious awards during his lifetime. In 1951, he published several papers on 'representations of semisimple Lie algebras and groups' for which, in 1954, he received the AMS Cole prize from the American Mathematical Society. In 1973, he became a Fellow of the Royal Society. The same year, he was awarded with an honorary degree from Delhi University. The Indian National Science Academy in 1974 awarded Harish Chandra the Ramanujan Medal for his work in mathematics. In 1975, he was made a fellow of the Indian Academy of Science and a fellow of the Indian National Science Academy. In 1981, he was made a fellow of the National Academy of Sciences in the United States and was also bestowed with an honorary degree from Yale University. A bust of Harish Chandra was unveiled at the Mehta Institute in his memory. His college, V.S.S.D College, which he attended during his youth, celebrates his birthday every year. The Government of India renamed a premier institute devoted to theoretical physics and mathematics the Harish-Chandra Research Institute (HRI) in his honor.

Personal Life & Death
In 1952, he married Lalitha Kale the daughter of Dr. Kale a botanist when he was serving a stint at the Tata Institute. He had two daughters Premala and Devaki. In 1983, Harish Chandra was attending a conference to in honor of Armand Borel's 60th Birthday in Princeton when he had a heart attack and passed away. He had suffered three heart attacks before. He died before he could attend a similar conference in his honor and so the scheduled event became a memorial conference.

Timeline
1923: Harish Chandra was born
1932: Enrolled in a private school
1941: Completed his B. Sc
1943: Received his Master's Degree; moved to the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bangalore as a postgraduate research fellow under Homi Bhabha
1944: Published several research papers along with Bhabha, the first being 'On the Theory of Point Particles'
1945: Was selected as a research student under Paul Dirac and so moved to the University of Cambridge.
1947: Obtained his Ph. D and moved to USA
1949: Moved to Harvard
1950: shifted to Colombia University
1950-53: Carried out research on 'semisimple lie groups'
1952-53: Worked at the Tata Institute in Bombay from
1954: Received the AMS Cole prize from the American Mathematical Society for his research on 'semisimple lie groups'
1955-56: Worked at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton
1957-58: Worked as a Guggenheim Fellow in Paris
1961: Was awarded the Sloan Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study
1963: Went back to the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton
1968: Was appointed the IBM von Neumann professor
1973: Became a Fellow of the Royal Society; awarded with an honorary degree from Delhi University
1974: Indian National Science Academy awarded him the Ramanujan Medal for his work in mathematics
1975: Was made a fellow of the Indian Academy of Science and a fellow of the Indian National Science Academy.
1981: Was made a fellow of the National Academy of Sciences in the United States; was also bestowed with an honorary degree from Yale University.

Raja Ramanna 

Born On: January 28, 1925
Born In: Tumkur, Karnataka
Died On: September 24, 2004
Career: Nuclear Scientist, Nuclear Physicist
Nationality: Indian

Handpicked by the founder of India's nuclear program, Dr. Homi Bhabha, Dr. Raja Ramanna was a celebrated physicist and nuclear scientist that India had ever produced. A multifaceted personality, Dr. Raja Ramanna played the roles of a technologist, nuclear physicist, administrator, leader, musician, Sanskrit literature scholar, and philosophy researcher. To complete the endless list of honors that this nobleman was gifted with, he was a complete human being. Following the steps of his ideals Dr. Homi Bhabha and Vikram Sarabhai, Ramanna managed to grab a major position in shaping India's energy and security programs. He is regarded as one of the most successful creators of science and technology in India with the tremendous success of India's peaceful explosion experiment.

Early Life
Raja Ramanna was born to B. Ramanna and Rukminiamma in the busy industrial town of Tumkur in Karnataka. His father was highly reputed and served as a judge in the judicial service of Mysore state. His mother was highly intelligent and loved to read. She often read Shakespeare and Charles Dickens, though her favorite was Sir Walter Scot. Apart from gaining immense influence and inspiration from his parents, Ramanna was greatly touched by his mother's sister Rajamma, who was widowed at an early age but with his grandfather's support, she managed to move ahead and became the headmistress of a Government Middle School earning fifty rupees a month. Ramanna had his early education in Mysore, but when the family shifted to Bangalore, he was admitted to Bishop Cotton Boys' School. On completion of matriculation, he went to St. Joseph's School for his intermediate studies. He joined the Madras Christian College in Tambaram for B. Sc (Hons) degree in physics and graduated in 1945. He later traveled to England to attain his doctoral degree in nuclear physics from King's College, London. In 1948, Ramanna successfully obtained his PhD degree.

TIFR Career
Ramanna was extremely fond and highly influenced by Homi Jehangir Bhabha and was fortunate to meet him in 1944. He was introduced by an examiner at Trinity College of Music, Dr. Alfred Mistowski, who stayed back in India at the outbreak of World War II. Though Ramanna was still a science student, he was sure that this was not his first and only meeting with Homi Bhabha. On his tour to London, Homi Bhabha offered Ramanna a job at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), the cradle of India's atomic energy program. Thus, on his completion of his PhD degree, Ramanna joined TIFR on December 1, 1949. Due to the relocation and renovation of the institute from Cumbala Hills in Mumbai to Yacht Club, Ramanna was offered two adjacent rooms on the fourth floor in Yacht Club by Homi Bhabha, seeing his interest in music. While the first room was for Ramanna, the second one was for his piano. Further, the ground floor became the nuclear laboratory of physics from where he started his project on nuclear fission and scattering. Here, he made several contributions in different areas of neutron, nuclear, and reactor physics.

BARC Career
Ramanna organized physics and rector physics programs at Bhabha Atomic Research Center (BARC), Trombay. In 1956, when India's first nuclear reactor, Apsara, was commissioned by Homi Bhabha, Ramanna was one of the youngest reactor physicists in the team. However, the major advancement came when BARC Training School was established in 1957 to develop the skilled manpower required for facing the challenging problems in nuclear science and technology under the leadership of Ramanna. It was under his directorship that India carried out the first nuclear test in Pokhran in 1974, nicknamed as Operation Smiling Buddha. He held the position of the Director of BARC from 1972-78 and 1981-83.

Later Life
Raja Ramanna was associated with a number of science academies and learning bodies across India. He helped in setting up the Centre for Advanced Technology at Indore in the early 1980s, which was dedicated towards the development of advanced accelerators, lasers, and other related technologies. Further, he even lent his support in the establishment of Variable Energy Cyclotron Centre (VEC) in Kolkata. He later ended up becoming the founder-Director of National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS), an institution set up by JRD Tata in Bangalore. Ramanna served his later years in supporting science institutions throughout the nation as President of Indian National Science Academy, Scientific Advisor Committee to Director General of International Atomic Energy Agency, President of 30th General Conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Vice President of Indian Academy of Sciences, President of Indian National Science Academy, and President of General Conference of Atomic Energy Agency at Vienna. He was honored with numerous accolades during his entire career tenure.

Death
Raja Ramanna passed away on September 24, 2004 in Mumbai after a cardiac arrest. Till date, he is highly honored and respected in India and Pakistan, and often known as the "Father of the Indian Nuclear Program".

Honors
Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award, 1963
Padma Shri Award, 1968
Padma Bhushan Award, 1973
Padma Vibhushan Award, 1975
Meghnad Saha Medal of the Indian National Science Academy, 1984
Om Prakash Bhasin Award, 1985
R.D. Birla Memorial Award, 1986
Asutosh Mookerji Gold Medal, 1996
D.Sc. (Honoris Causa) by several universities

Posts Held

• Chairman, Governing Council, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore
• Council of Management, Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, Bangalore
• Chairman, Board of Governors, Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, 1972-78
• President, Indian National Science Academy, 1977-78
• Vice-President, Indian Academy of Sciences, 1977-79
• Scientific Adviser to the Minister of Defence, 1978-81
• Director-General of Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO) , 1978-81
• Secretary for Defence Research, Government of India
• Chairman, Atomic Energy Commission, 1983-87
• President, General Conference of Atomic Energy Agency, Vienna, 1986
• Secretary, Department of Atomic Energy
• Director, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, 1972-78 and 1981-83
• Director, National Institute of Advanced Studies, IISC campus, Bangalore, 1987-89 and 1990-97

Timeline
1925: Raja Ramanna was born in Tumkur, Karnataka
1944: Met Homi Bhabha
1945: Obtained B. Sc (Hons) degree in physics from Madras Christian College, Tambaram
1948: Received Ph. D from King's College, London
1949: Joined TIFR on December 1st
1956: India's first nuclear reactor, Apsara, was commissioned, which Ramanna was a part of
1968: Honored with Padma Shri Award
1972-78: Served as Director of BARC
1973: Bestowed with Padma Bhushan Award
1974: Carried out India's first nuclear test at Pokhran
1975: Conferred upon with Padma Vibhushan Award
1981-83: Director of BARC
1990: Served as the Union minister of State for Defense
1997-03: Served as a member of the Rajya Sabha
1996: Presented with Asutosh Mookerji Gold Medal
2004: Died on 24th September aged 79.

Birbal Sahni

Born - 14 November 1891
Died - 10 April 1949
Achievements - Birbal Sahni was a renowned paleobotanist and geologist of India. He is Sahni is credited for setting up the Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeobotany at Lucknow in the state of Uttar Pradesh. In the year 1929, he received the degree of Sc. D. from the University of Cambridge. He was also appointed the Fellow of the Royal Society of London (FRS) in the year 1936, which is the biggest British scientific honor.

Birbal Sahni was a renowned paleobotanist of India, who studied the fossils of the Indian subcontinent. Also a great geologist, Sahni is credited for establishing the Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeobotany at Lucknow in the state of Uttar Pradesh. Born on 14 November in the year 1891 at Behra in the Saharanpur District of West Punjab, Birbal was the third son of Ishwar Devi and Prof. Ruchi Ram Sahni. Some famous personalities who were regular guests of his parents were Motilal Nehru, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Sarojini Naidu and others.

Read on further about the biography of Birbal Sahni, who received his education at the Government College University of Lahore and later from Punjab University. He attended the Emmanuel College at Cambridge in the year 1914. And after this, he pursued further studies under Professor A.C. Seward and was given the D.Sc. degree from London University in the year 1919. Birbal Sahni then came back to his native country India to work as the professor of Botany at the highly esteemed Banaras Hindu University at the holy city of Varanasi.

Sahni also taught at the Punjab University for about a year. Birbal Sahni's academic background was so strong that he was elected the head of the botany department in Lucknow University in the year 1921. There were numerous such landmarks in the life history of Birbal Sahni, whose fabulous research work was honored by the University of Cambridge that decided to present him with the degree of Sc. D. in the year 1929. In the coming time, Sahni not only continued his own study, but also appointed and guided a number of bright students under him.

He holds the credit of establishing the Paleobotanical Society that went on to set up the Institute of Palaeobotany on 10 September 1946. Professor Sahni was respected by all academicians and scholars of his time both in India and abroad. He was appointed the Fellow of the Royal Society of London (FRS) in the year 1936, which is the biggest British scientific honor. And for the first time since its inception, this award was given out to an Indian botanist.