Category Great Indian Scientists

Vijay Bhatkar

Vijay P. Bhatkar is an Indian computer scientist, IT leader and educationalist. He is best known as the architect of India’s national initiative in supercomputing where he led the development of Param supercomputers. He is a Maharashtra Bhushan, Padma Shri, Padma Bhushan awardee. Indian computer magazine Dataquest has placed him among the star pioneers who shaped India’s IT industry. He was the founder executive director of C-DAC and is currently working on the developing Exascale supercomputing mission for India.

Known for

  • Architect of PARAM series of Supercomputers

Awards

  • Padma Shri
  • Padma Bhushan
  • Maharashtra Bhushan

Institutes

  • Indian Institute of Technology Delhi
  • Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda
  • Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology

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Harish-Chandra

Harish-Chandra (11 October 1923 – 16 October 1983) was an Indian American mathematician and physicist who did fundamental work in representation theory, especially harmonic analysis on semisimple Lie groups.

Fields

  • Mathematics
  • Physics

Institutions 

  •    Indian Institute of Science
  • Harvard University
  • Columbia University
  • Tata Institute of Fundamental Research
  • Institute for Advanced Study

Awards

  • Fellow of the Royal Society
  • Cole Prize in Algebra (1954)
  • Srinivasa Ramanujan Medal

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Sivaraj Ramseshan

Sivaraj Ramseshan (October 10, 1923 – December 29, 2003) was an Indian scientist known for his work in the field of crystallography. Ramaseshan served as Director of the Indian Institute of Science and was awarded the Padma Bhushan. Ramaseshan is the nephew of Indian scientist and Nobel laureate Sir C. V. Raman and cousin of Subramanyan Chandrasekhar.

Fields

  • Physics

Institutions

  • Indian Institute of Science
  • Indian Institute of Technology

Awards

  • Padma Bhushan

As scientist

On completion of his doctorate, Ramaseshan joined the Indian Institute of Science as a lecturer. During this time, he developed an interest in X-ray crystallography and was instrumental in improving the material science division in the National Aerospace Laboratories. Ramaseshan also taught as a professor in the Indian Institute of Technology.

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Ravi Sankaran

Ravi Sankaran (October 4, 1963 – January 17, 2009) was an Indian ornithologist whose work concerned the conservation of several threatened birds of India. He was the Director of the Salim Ali Centre for Ornithology and Natural History, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu. Ravi studied at the Rishi Valley School, Madanapalli, Andhra Pradesh; obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in Zoology from Loyola College, Chennai and a doctorate from Bombay Natural History Society Ravi joined the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) in 1985 in the endangered species project on the great Indian bustard (Ardeotis nigriceps) and florican species (family Otididae) and played a role in developing recovery plans for these species. He also established Florican Watch, involving local people.

Ravi Sankaran studied several endangered birds of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. His work on the Narcondam hornbill, Nicobar megapode and the edible-nest swiftlets aided the development of conservation management of these species. Ravi was also involved in a project Strengthening community conservation efforts in Nagaland: a programme to impart technical support on biodiversity conservation and livelihood options to communities, a collaborative programme between the Nagaland Empowerment of People through Economic Development, Kohima (NEPED), and SACON, in collaboration with other organisations such as Kalpavriksh, Pune; Ecosystems India, Guwahati; Aranayak, Assam; ATREE, Bangalore; and Nature Conservation Foundation, Mysore.funded by Sir Dorabji Tata Trust, Mumbai.

Awards

  • WTI Endangered Species Award-2004

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Giridhar Madras

Giridhar Madras is an Indian professor at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India.

Education

Madras speaks four languages, English, Hindi, Tamil, and Kannada. Madras received his chemical engineering degree from Indian Institute of Technology at Madras in 1990. He obtained his Ph.D. degree in chemical engineering from Texas A&M University, United States, in 1994. Subsequently, he worked in the University of California at Davis, USA. He returned to India as an Assistant Professor of chemical engineering at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore in 1998.

Fields

  • Chemistry

Awards

  • Scopus Young Scientist Award from Elsevier for being the most cited young author in engineering
  • Presidential Swarnajayanthi fellowship by the Department of Science and Technology, India, 2006
  • Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar prize from CSIR, India, 2009
  • J.C. Bose National fellowship, 2014

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Kedareswar Banerjee

Kedareswar Banerjee (15 September 1900 – 30 April 1975) was an X-ray crystallographer and director of the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science, Kolkata. Early in his career he determined the structures of naphthalene and anthracene. In 1931, he worked with Sir William Henry Bragg and developed one of the first direct methods of crystal structure determination. He was Professor of Physics at the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science from 1943 to 1952 and Director of the Association from 1959 until his retirement in 1965. Between 1952 and 1959 he was Head of the Department of Physics at Allahabad University.

               His interests in crystallography were widespread and, with his death, India has lost a renowned teacher. K. Banerjee joined the research group of Sir C. V. Raman at the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science (IACS), Calcutta, a premier Indian research institute of India. He worked in various institutions including IACS, the India Meteorological Department, University of Dhaka and Allahabad University and finally retired as the Director of IACS, Calcutta in 1965.

Field

  • X-ray Crystallographic

Institutions

  • University of Allahabad,
  •  India Meteorological Department, University of Dhaka,
  •  Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science

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Koppillil Radhakrishnan

Koppillil Radhakrishnan (born 29 August 1949) is an Indian scientist. He is chairman of the Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology, Shibpur, having taken the position in December 2014, and is chairman for the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology.Radhakrishnan previously served as chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) between 2009 and 2014. He is a life fellow of the Indian Geophysical Union and is also an accomplished vocalist (Carnatic music) and Kathakali artist.

Fields

  • Electrical engineering
  • Space research

Awards

  • Padma Bhushan (2014)

Radhakrishnan hails from Irinjalakuda in Thrissur district, Kerala. After his studies from Christ College, Irinjalakuda, he completed his B.Sc. degree in Electrical Engineering in 1970 from the Government Engineering College, Thrissur. He started his career in the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) as an Avionics Engineer at the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, Trivandrum, in 1971.

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M. G. K. Menon

Mambillikalathil Govind Kumar Menon, FRS (28 August 1928 – 22 November 2016)also known as M. G. K. Menon, was a physicist and policy maker from India. He had a prominent role in the development of science and technology in India over four decades. One of his most important contributions was nurturing the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, which his mentor Homi J. Bhabha founded in 1945.

Born

  • Mambillikalathil Govind Kumar Menon
  • 28 August 1928
  • Mangalore, Karnataka, India

Field

  • Physics

Institutions

  • Tata Institute of Fundamental Research
  • Indian Space Research Organisation
  • Department of Science & Technology, Government of India

Awards

  • Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology (1960),
  • Fellow of the Royal Society(FRS)(1970)
  • Abdus Salam Medal (1996)

 

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Roddam Narasimha

Roddam Narasimha (born 20 July 1933) is an Indian aerospace scientist and fluid dynamicist. He was a Professor of Aerospace Engineering at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Director of National Aerospace Laboratories (NAL) and the Chairman of Engineering Mechanics Unit at Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR), Bangalore, India. He is now an Honorary Professor at JNCASR and concurrently holds the Pratt & Whitney Chair in Science and Engineering at the University of Hyderabad. Narasimha has been awarded the Padma Vibushan, India’s second highest civilian award, in 2013.

Education and career

He obtained his BE from Mysore University , from University Visvesvaraya College of Engineering in 1953 and his ME from Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore in 1955. He worked with Satish Dhawan during his time at IISc. He then worked with Hans Liepmann at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), United States to obtain his PhD degree in 1961.

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Vinod Johri

Vinod Johri

Vinod Johri (10 June 1935) was an Indian astrophysicist. He was an eminent cosmologist, a retired professor of astrophysics at Indian Institute of Technology, Madras and an emeritus professor at Lucknow University since 1995. Johri had over 75 research publications and articles published in pioneering journals. His major contributions in cosmological research included ‘power law inflation, genesis of quintessence fields of dark energy and phantom cosmologies’. He was the co-author of the first model of power law inflation in Brans–Dicke theory along with C. Mathiazhagan. He was honored by Uttar Pradesh Government by Research Award of the Council of Science & Technology (CSIR).

Institution 

  • Indian Institute of Technology
  • Lucknow University
  • Gorakhpur University
  • Allahabad University

Fields

  • Astrophysics
  •  Physics
  •  Cosmology

Johri spent over 45 years researching in cosmology, acting as a research guide and principal investigator of various research projects of Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, Department of Science & Technology and University Grants Commission of India. Johri was a Commonwealth Fellow, a senior visitor at Cambridge University (UK) and a Fellow of Royal Astronomical Society of London. He worked as consultant for UNESCO at United Nations Development Program[6] in Iran and as a DAAD Fellow at University of Mainz (Germany), as a visiting scientist at Hansen Lab (Gravity Probe B Group) Stanford University (USA) and as an International Scholar at Fine Theoretical Physics Institute at University of Minnesota at Minneapolis (USA). He died in Dallas, USA at the age of 78 due to complications arising from Kidney failure.

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