The Indomitable Chemist

Prof. CNR Rao is a living legend. Einstein paid a compliment to Mahatma Gandhi on his 70th birthday. He said, “Generations to come, it may well be, will scarce believe that such a man as this one ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth”. On Prof. Rao’s birthday, I would repeat these words. Prof. Rao is not an individual, he is an institution, he is a phenomenon. I feel lucky that our generations could see him, touch him, feel him, experience him, learn from him and get inspired by him. I have watched Prof. Rao as a scientist, as a science leader, as a science institution builder and indeed as a leader of leaders of science. I have also watched him as a wonderful, warm-hearted human being with abundant empathy. I have seen his childlike enthusiasm. I have watched him as `courage personified’. What follows is more anecdotal but solely based on my personal viewpoint. Professor Rao has had a tremendous influence on my life. He has been my guru, guide, friend and philosopher. I met him for the first time when he was the Chairman of the Research Advisory Council of the National Chemical Laboratory (NCL) in the nineteen eighties. I was then in my late thirties. Professor Rao has an uncanny ability to spot talent among the young. He was the President of the Indian Science Congress in the year 1988, which was held in Pune University. Mr. Rajiv Gandhi was the Prime Minister and he inaugurated the Science Congress. Later on, during the lunch that followed, Prof. Rao made a special point to introduce me to Rajiv Gandhi. I still remember his words. He said, `Mr. Prime Minister, meet a rising young star of Indian science’. Little did I then know that within the next couple of months, he would make me a member of the Science Advisory Council to the Prime Minister, which he was chairing. At 42, I was the youngest member and I remember people calling me the `baby’ of the team. Getting that huge exposure at such a young age was something very special for me – I got a helicopter view of India at large. It helped me enormously as I moved on in life. 'Padma Vibhushan' Dr. Raghunath Anant Mashelkar

"American contributions to Chemistry. By Benjamin Silliman." v. 5, p. 70-114, 195-209.

As we trace the development of any branch of natural knowledge we find that there has been a gradual progress from vague and fanciful to accurate and definite views of Nature. We find that as man's conceptions of natural phenomena become more accurate they also for a time become more limited, but that this limitation is necessary in order that facts may be correctly classified, and so there may be laid the basis for generalizations which, being definite, shall also be capable of expansion. At first Nature is strange; she is full of wonderful and fearful appearances. Man is overwhelmed by the sudden and apparently irregular outbreaks of storms, by the capricious freaks of thunder and lightning, by the awful and unannounced devastations of the volcano or the earthquake; he believes himself to be surrounded by an invisible array of beings more powerful than himself, but, like himself, changeable in their moods and easily provoked to anger. After a time he begins to find that it is possible to trace points of connection between some of the appearances which had so overpowered or perplexed him.