Student Education Repository (மாணவர்கள் கல்விக் களஞ்சியம்): Today (June 30, 1934) is the birthday of C.N.R. Rao, who successfully launched the Mangalyan spacecraft to Mars.

Wednesday, June 30, 2021

Today (June 30, 1934) is the birthday of C.N.R. Rao, who successfully launched the Mangalyan spacecraft to Mars.

Today (June 30, 1934) is the birthday of C.N.R. Rao, who successfully launched the Mangalyan spacecraft to Mars.

Chintamani Nagesh Ramachandra Rao (C. N. R. Rao) was born on June 30, 1934, in Bangalore to Hanumantha Nagesh Rao and Nagamma Nagesh Rao in a Kannada Madhava Brahmin family. The father was an inspector of schools. He was an only child, and his educated parents created an educational environment. He was well versed in Hindu literature from his mother and in English from his father at an early age. He did not attend elementary school. But he was home-trained by his mother. He was particularly proficient in arithmetic and Hindu literature. In 1940, at the age of six, he entered middle school. Although he is the youngest in his class, he teaches his classmates math and English. He passed the Lower Secondary examination (seventh class) in the first class in 1944. He was ten years old, and his father gave him four ananas (twenty-five paise).

Rao attended Acharya Badashala High School in Basavanagudi. This had a lasting impact on his interest in chemistry. His father enrolled him in a Kannada-medium course to promote his mother tongue. But he used English for all the conversations at home. He graduated from high school in 1947 with a first-class certificate. He did his B.Sc from Bangalore Central College. Here he developed his communication skills in English and also learned Sanskrit. He received his bachelor's degree in 1951 from the University of Mysore in the first class at the age of seventeen. He initially thought of joining the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) for a diploma or postgraduate degree in Chemical Engineering. But a teacher persuaded him to join the Banaras Hindu University. He received a master’s degree in chemistry from BHU two years later.

In 1953 he was awarded a Ph.D. at the Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur. But four foreign universities, MIT, Penn State, Columbia, and Burdock, also sponsored him. He chose Burdock. His first dissertation was published in 1954 in the Agra University Journal of Research. Two years and nine months later, at the age of twenty-four, he completed his Ph.D. After completing his graduate studies, Rao returned to Bangalore in 1959 to pursue a lectureship at IISC. Embarked on an independent research project. In 1963 he accepted a permanent position in the Department of Chemistry at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur. In 1964 he was elected a Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences. He returned to IISC in 1976 to establish a solid state and structural chemistry division. From 1984 to 1994 he was the Director of IISC. Rao has been a visiting professor at various stages of his career at the University of Burdock, the University of Oxford, the University of Cambridge, and the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Rao is currently the National Research Professor at the Jawaharlal Nehru Center for Advanced Scientific Research in Bangalore, which he founded in 1989, with Linus Pauling as Professor of Research and Honorary Chair. He twice served as the Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Council to the Prime Minister of India from 1985 to 1989 and from 2005 to 2014. He is also the Director of the International Center for Science (ICMS), which he founded in 2010, and serves on the board of the Scientific Initiative. On November 16, 2013, the Government of India announced that he would be awarded the Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian award. He was instrumental in the successful launch of the Mars Orbiter Mangalyan spacecraft to Mars. He was elected an Honorary Foreign Member by the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Professor C.N.R. held many important responsibilities such as the head of the Jawaharlal Nehru Center for Advanced Scientific Research. Rao's maximum contribution was in spectroscopy and molecules in chemistry.

Source By: Wikipedia

Information: Ramesh, Assistant Professor of Physics, Nehru Memorial College, Puthanampatti, Trichy.