C.N.R. Rao - 2
Profession
Rao returned to Bangalore in 1959 to join IISC as a lecturer. He got a monthly salary of Rs 500. He started his own research with six PhD students. After three years he got permanent appointment in the Department of Chemistry at the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur. The Director P.K. Kelkar directly appointed him as Head of the department. He worked there from 1963 to 1976. In 1964, C.V. Raman informed him that he was elected as a fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences. In 1976 he returned to IISc to set up a solid state and structural chemistry unit. He became Director of the IISc 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. Rao is currently the National Research Professor, Linus Pauling Research Professor and Honorary President of Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research,Bangalore which he founded in 1989. 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). 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. 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 La2CuO4. 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. Rao serves on the board of the Science Initiative Group.
occupied earlier during 1985–89. He is also the director of the International Centre for Materials Science (ICMS). 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. 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 La2CuO4. 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. Rao serves on the board of the Science Initiative Group.
Awards and recognition
• DSc from Mysore University in 1961
• Marlow Medal by the Faraday Society of England in 1967
• Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology in Chemical Science in 1968
• Padma Shri in 1974
• Royal Society of Chemistry (London) Medal in 1981
• Member of many of the world's scientific associations, including the National Academy of Sciences, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Royal Society (London, 1982), French Academy, Japanese Academy, Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts and the Pontifical Academy.
• Honorary doctorates from several universities including 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, Delhi, Patna, JNTU, Kalyani, Karnataka, Kolkata, Kuvempu, Lucknow, Mangalore, Manipur, Mysore, Osmania, Punjab, Roorkee, Sikkim Manipal, SRM, Tumkur, Sri Venkateswara, Vidyasagar, and Visveswaraya Technological University.
• Padma Vibhushan in 1985
• Hevrovsky Gold Medal of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences in 1989
• Centenary Medal of the Royal Society of Chemistry, London in 2000
• Hughes Medal by the Royal Society in 2000
• Karnataka Ratna by the Karnataka State Government in 2001[1]
• Great Cross of the National Order of Scientific Merit from the President of Brazil in 2002
• Doctor of Science from University of Calcutta in 2004[2]
• Somiya Award of the International Union of Materials Research in 2004
• India Science Award in 2004
• Dan David Prize from Tel Aviv University in 2005[3] shared with George Whitesides and Robert Langer.
• Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur (Knight of the Legion of Honour, France) in 2005
• Foreign fellow of Bangladesh Academy of Sciences[4]
• Nikkei Asia Prize for Science, Technology and Innovation, by Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Inc., Japan in 2008
• Order of Friendship by the President of Russia in 2009
• Royal Medal by the Royal Society in 2009
• August-Wilhelm-von-Hofmann Medal by the German Chemical Society in 2010.
• Ernesto Illy Trieste Science Prize for materials research in 2011
• 2012 Award for International Scientific Cooperation from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2013[5]
• Elected honorary foreign member of Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2013
• Distinguished Academician Award from IIT Patna in 2013[6]
• Bharat Ratna in 2013
Personal life
Rao is married to Indumati Rao in 1960. They have two children, Sanjay and Suchitra. His son Sanjay Rao is engaged in popularising science in Bangalore's schools. His daughter Suchitra is married to K.M. Ganesh, the director of the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) at Pune, Maharashtra. Rao is quite technophobic. He removed computers from his tables and never check his email by himself. He also said that he uses mobile phone only for talking to his wife.
The PhD student took the responsibility for the incident and issued an apology. Later Rao offered to withdraw the article from the journal, but the editor let the publication stay as it is. Rao claimed to have never indulged in plagiarism. Later few more instances of plagiarism by Rao and his collaborators were reported. Rao was criticised by an Indian scientist for these incidents and passing the responsibility to the junior scientists. On 17 November 2013, at a press conference following the announcement of his Bharat Ratna, he called the Indian politicians "idiots" that caused a national outrage. He said, "Why the hell have these idiots [politicians] given so little to us despite what we have done. For the money that the government has given us we [scientists] have done much more." In his defence Rao insisted that he merely talked about the "idiotic" way the politicians ignore investments for research funding in science.
• Marlow Medal by the Faraday Society of England in 1967
• Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology in Chemical Science in 1968
• Padma Shri in 1974
• Royal Society of Chemistry (London) Medal in 1981
• Member of many of the world's scientific associations, including the National Academy of Sciences, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Royal Society (London, 1982), French Academy, Japanese Academy, Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts and the Pontifical Academy.
• Honorary doctorates from several universities including 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, Delhi, Patna, JNTU, Kalyani, Karnataka, Kolkata, Kuvempu, Lucknow, Mangalore, Manipur, Mysore, Osmania, Punjab, Roorkee, Sikkim Manipal, SRM, Tumkur, Sri Venkateswara, Vidyasagar, and Visveswaraya Technological University.
• Padma Vibhushan in 1985
• Hevrovsky Gold Medal of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences in 1989
• Centenary Medal of the Royal Society of Chemistry, London in 2000
• Hughes Medal by the Royal Society in 2000
• Karnataka Ratna by the Karnataka State Government in 2001[1]
• Great Cross of the National Order of Scientific Merit from the President of Brazil in 2002
• Doctor of Science from University of Calcutta in 2004[2]
• Somiya Award of the International Union of Materials Research in 2004
• India Science Award in 2004
• Dan David Prize from Tel Aviv University in 2005[3] shared with George Whitesides and Robert Langer.
• Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur (Knight of the Legion of Honour, France) in 2005
• Foreign fellow of Bangladesh Academy of Sciences[4]
• Nikkei Asia Prize for Science, Technology and Innovation, by Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Inc., Japan in 2008
• Order of Friendship by the President of Russia in 2009
• Royal Medal by the Royal Society in 2009
• August-Wilhelm-von-Hofmann Medal by the German Chemical Society in 2010.
• Ernesto Illy Trieste Science Prize for materials research in 2011
• 2012 Award for International Scientific Cooperation from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2013[5]
• Elected honorary foreign member of Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2013
• Distinguished Academician Award from IIT Patna in 2013[6]
• Bharat Ratna in 2013
Personal life
Rao is married to Indumati Rao in 1960. They have two children, Sanjay and Suchitra. His son Sanjay Rao is engaged in popularising science in Bangalore's schools. His daughter Suchitra is married to K.M. Ganesh, the director of the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) at Pune, Maharashtra. Rao is quite technophobic. He removed computers from his tables and never check his email by himself. He also said that he uses mobile phone only for talking to his wife.
Controversies
He has been accused of indulging and allowing plagiarism. In December 2011, C. N. R. Rao apologized to Advanced Materials – a peer-reviewed journal, for reproducing text of other scientists in his research paper. His collaborator and the other senior author of the paper 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. Later Rao offered to withdraw the article from the journal, but the editor let the publication stay as it is. Rao claimed to have never indulged in plagiarism. Later few more instances of plagiarism by Rao and his collaborators were reported. Rao was criticised by an Indian scientist for these incidents and passing the responsibility to the junior scientists. On 17 November 2013, at a press conference following the announcement of his Bharat Ratna, he called the Indian politicians "idiots" that caused a national outrage. He said, "Why the hell have these idiots [politicians] given so little to us despite what we have done. For the money that the government has given us we [scientists] have done much more." In his defence Rao insisted that he merely talked about the "idiotic" way the politicians ignore investments for research funding in science.
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