A Passage From India: A Conversation With P. Rama Rao
- PDF / 1,926,447 Bytes
- 4 Pages / 576 x 777.6 pts Page_size
- 69 Downloads / 173 Views
A Passage From India: A Conversation With P. Rama Rao Prof. Rama Rao rarely travels outside of India. MRS Bulletin tracked him last month in the United States where he attended a conference and was on a short holiday, the first one, it seems, for over a decade. For scientists and technologists in India, Prof. Rama Rao needs no introduction. For decades, he has been an outstanding researcher in materials, was a top government administrator of science and technology, a distinguished professor of metal sciences in Banaras Hindu University, and was, until recently, the President of the Indian Academy of Sciences and of the Materials Research Society of India (MRS-I). This year he presided over the largest annual gathering of scientists and technologists in India, The Science Congress, that attracted more than 7,000 delegates. He is also one of the very few foreign fellows of The Royal Academy of Engineering of the United Kingdom. MRS Bulletin was keen to meet and talk with Prof. Rama Rao to learn what prompted him and his fellow materials scientists in India to form MRS-lndia; and more generally, we wanted to know what he sees as ike role for materials scientists and technologists in society. When we first planned our interview, our many Indian friends warned us of Rama Rao's modesty and self-effacement, and how it could preclude our drawing him out in conversation. We need not have worried. When we first met him at his friend's home in Pittsburgh and later at the MRS Bulletin office, Rama Rao spoke freely and was ready with his speculations on where materials science was heading. Rama Rao speaks slowly and deliberately with an enviable command of the language and subject. Years in government have not muted the academic in him. When we talked of his research interests, his eyes lighted up with a rush of words, sharing with us his latest excitement of developing a very strong and tough engineering alloy. But we wanted to go back to what first turned him on to materials: What turned you onto science or metallurgy in the first place?
In my case, I actually stumbled into metallurgy. I'm basically a physicist. One of my class fellows in the Physics Honors course decided to pursue metallurgy at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. For me he was a role model, and so I followed him to the Indian Institute. Having been accepted into the Institute, I found I liked the subject very much. Also at the Institute, I held a teaching position in the metallurgy group where I taught x-ray diffraction and physics of metals to metallurgy students. My physics background was very useful in teaching these courses. As time went by, I learned that metallurgy MRS BULLETIN/SEPTEMBER 1998
is a discipline that derives so much from basic sciences, and later I also saw its impact on technology as well. Metallurgy, as thus, is a unique discipline which is really not one discipline, but has connections everywhere.
steels. In ceramics we use transformations to toughen the material. Transformation thus strengthens weak solids like metals, while
Data Loading...
