C. N. R. Rao will be awarded the Bharat Ratna, as declared by the Government of India on 16 November, 2013.
C. N. R. Rao
From Wikipedia,
Chintamani Nagesa Ramachandra Rao, also known as
C.N.R. Rao (born 30 June 1934), is an Indian
chemist who has worked mainly in
solid-state
and structural chemistry. He currently serves as the Head of the
Scientific Advisory Council to the Prime Minister of India. On 16th
November 2013,Government of India announced to give the Bharat Ratna,
the highest civilian award to him along with famous cricket player
Sachin Tendulkar.
Early life and education
CNR Rao was born in
Bangalore of father Hanumantha Nagesa Rao, and mother Nagamma Nagesa Rao. He obtained his bachelors degree from
Mysore University in 1951, obtaining a masters from
Banaras Hindu University two years later, and obtained his Ph.D. in 1958 from
Purdue University. In 1961 he received
DSc from Mysore University. He joined the faculty of
Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur in 1963.
[1]
He has received Honorary Doctorates from many Universities such as
Bordeaux, Caen, Colorado, Khartoum, Liverpool, Northwestern,
Novosibirsk, Oxford, Purdue, Stellenbosch, Universite Joseph Fourier,
Wales, Wroclaw, Notre Dame, Uppsala, Aligarh Muslim, Anna, AP, Banaras,
Bengal Engineering, Bangalore, Burdwan, Bundelkhand, Delhi, Hyderabad,
IGNOU, IIT-Bombay, Kharagpur, and Delhi, JNTU, Kalyani, Karnataka,
Kolkata, Kuvempu, Lucknow, Mangalore, Manipur, Mysore, Osmania, Punjab,
Roorkee, Sikkim Manipal, SRM, Tumkur, Sri Venkateswara, Vidyasagar, and
Visveswaraya Technological University.
[2][3]
Profession
Rao is currently the
National Research Professor and
Linus Pauling Research Professor and Honorary President of the
Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research
in Bangalore, India. He is the founding President of the Jawaharlal
Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research. He was appointed Chair of
the Scientific Advisory Council to the Indian Prime Minister in January
2005, a position which he had occupied earlier during 1985–89. He is
also the director of the International Centre for Materials Science
(ICMS).
Earlier, he served as a faculty member in the Department of Chemistry at the
Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur from 1963 to 1976 and as the Director of the
Indian Institute of Science from 1984 to 1994. He has also been a visiting professor at Purdue University, the
University of Oxford, the
University of Cambridge
and University of California, Santa Barbara. He was the Jawaharlal
Nehru Professor at the University of Cambridge and Professorial Fellow
at the King's College, Cambridge during 1983-1984.
[2]
Rao is one of the world's foremost
solid state and
materials chemists. He has contributed to the development of the field over five decades.
[3] His work on
transition metal oxides
has led to basic understanding of novel phenomena and the relationship
between materials properties and the structural chemistry of these
materials.
Rao was one of the earliest to synthesize two-dimensional oxide materials such as La
2CuO
4.
His work has led to a systematic study of compositionally controlled
metal-insulator transitions. Such studies have had a profound impact in
application fields such as colossal magneto resistance and high
temperature
superconductivity. Oxide
semiconductors
have unusual promise. He has made immense contributions to
nanomaterials over the last two decades, besides his work on hybrid
materials. He is the author of around 1500 research papers. He has
authored and edited 45 books.
[3][4]
Rao serves on the board of the
Science Initiative Group.
Controversies
He has been accused of indulging and allowing plagiarism. In December 2011, C. N. R. Rao apologized to 'Advanced Materials'
[5][6] – a peer-reviewed journal, for reproducing text of other scientists in his research paper.
[7]
His collaborator and the other senior author of the paper Prof. S. B.
Krupanidhi accused a co-author PhD student at IISc for the mistake,
“These sentences were part of the introduction of the paper, which was
written by our student, that neither of us (namely, the senior authors,
Rao and Krupanidhi) paid attention to”.
The PhD student took the responsibility for the incident and issued an apology.
[8][9] Later C.N.R. Rao offered to withdraw the article from the journal, but the editor let the publication stay as it is.
[10] C.N.R. Rao claimed to have never indulged in plagiarism.
[10] Later few more instances of plagiarism by Prof. Rao and his collaborators were reported.
[11] Prof Rao was criticised by an
Indian scientist for these incidents and passing the responsibility to the junior scientists.
[12]
It was argued that it was unethical from Prof Rao to claim
correspondent authorship in an article in which according to Prof Rao
himself, he has no significant role.
Awards
He will be awarded the
Bharat Ratna, as declared by the
Government of India on 16 November, 2013. He was awarded the
Hughes Medal by the
Royal Society in 2000, and he became the first recipient of the
India Science Award, instituted by the Government of India, for his contributions to solid state chemistry and materials science, awarded in 2004.
[13]
He has won several international prizes and is a member of many of the world's scientific associations, including the U.S.
National Academy of Sciences,
American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the
Royal Society (London; FRS, 1982),
French Academy,
Japanese Academy,
Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts and the
Pontifical Academy.
He was awarded
Dan David Prize in 2005,
[14] by the
Dan David Foundation,
Tel Aviv University, which he shared with
George Whitesides and
Robert Langer.
[15] In 2005, he was conferred the title
Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur (Knight of the Legion of Honour) by
France, awarded by the
French Government. He had also been given the honours
Padma Shri and
Padma Vibhushan by the
Indian Government and
Karnataka Ratna by the Karnataka state government. He is a foreign fellow of
Bangladesh Academy of Sciences.
[16] He was also awarded an honorary
Doctor of Science by the
University of Calcutta in 2004.
[17]
Dr Rao has also been conferred with China's top science award for his
important contributions in boosting Sino-India scientific cooperation.
[18] The award was given by
Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) in January 2013, which is China's top academic and research institution for natural sciences.
