V. S. Ramamurthy

V. S. Ramamurthy
Born 2 April 1942
Tamil Nadu, India
Occupation Nuclear physicist
Years active Since 1963
Awards Padma Bhushan

Valangiman Subramanian Ramamurthy is an Indian nuclear physicist and a former director and incumbent emeritus professor of the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru.[1][2] He is a former chairman of the Recruitment and Assessment Board of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research and has served as a member of the design team of the first Indian nuclear experiment in Pokhran on 18 May 1974.[3] The Government of India awarded him the third highest Indian civilian honour of Padma Bhushan in 2005.[4]

Biography

Born on 2 April 1942[5] in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu, Ramamurthy secured his graduate and master's degrees in Physics from the University of Madras and joined the training school of the Atomic Energy Establishment, Trombay, (present day Bhabha Atomic Research Centre) in 1963 for advanced training.[3] He continued at the institution to start his career where he stayed till 1989 during which period he secured a doctoral degree (PhD) in 1971 from the University of Mumbai for his thesis on stochastic theory of fragment mass and charge distributions in low energy fission.[3]

In 1989, he moved to the Institute of Physics, Bhubaneswar as the director, a post he held till 1995.[6] The Government of India appointed him in 1995 as the Secretary at the Department of Science and Technology (DST) where he worked till his superannuation in 2006. Thereafter, he held the Homi Bhabha chair at the Inter-University Accelerator Center, New Delhi till 2009 when he took up the post of the director at the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru. On his retirement in 2014, he was made the Emeritus Professor of the institute.[2] He was also associated with the Recruitment and Assessment Board of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research as the chairman[3] and chaired the standing advisory group on nuclear applications of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).[7]

Legacy and achievements

Ramamurthy was a member of the team which designed the Smiling Buddha project for carrying out the first Indian nuclear experiment at Pokhran on 18 May 1974.[3] During his stint as the director of the Institute of Physics, he was the leader of the atomic and molecular clusters and low energy accelerator project and contributed to the setting up of the 3 MV accelerator centre at the institute.[3] He was also involved in the high energy nuclear physics programme using the heavy ion accelerators at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva.[3] His researches covered the theoretical and experimental aspects of Nuclear fission physics and he is credited with advanced research on nuclear shell effects,[8] nuclear level densities[9] and pre-equilibrium fission and sub-barrier fusion dynamics.[3] His researches have been documented by way of several articles published in peer reviewed journals[10] and a book, Nuclear Radiation Detectors, released in 1986.[11] He has also written on the sociological aspects of science and technology.[12]

Selected Bibliography

Awards and honours

Ramamurthy is an elected fellow of the Indian National Science Academy (1987) and has served on its council for many years.[3] He is also an elected member of the Indian Academy of Sciences, (1991)[5] the National Academy of Sciences, India[13] and the Indian National Academy of Engineering.[14] He is a fellow of the The World Academy of Sciences and a foreign member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences.[3] The Government of India awarded him the third highest Indian civilian award of Padma Bhushan in 2005.[4]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Security of Kudankulam plant intact: Former nuclear programme head". The Indian Express. 1 December 2013. Retrieved July 11, 2015.
  2. 1 2 "Past Directors". National Institute of Advanced Sciences. 2015. Retrieved July 11, 2015.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 "V. S. Ramamurthy - Indian Fellow". Indian National Science Academy. 2015. Retrieved July 11, 2015.
  4. 1 2 "Padma Shri" (PDF). Padma Shri. 2015. Retrieved June 18, 2015.
  5. 1 2 "Indian Academy of Sciences Fellow". Indian Academy of Sciences Fellow. 2015. Retrieved July 12, 2015.
  6. ↑ "Valangiraman S. Ramamurthy". New Age International. 2015. Retrieved July 11, 2015.
  7. ↑ "Research is a commitment, not a job". India Educative Review. 2 June 2011. Retrieved July 12, 2015.
  8. ↑ V.S. Ramamurthy; S.S. Kapoor (December 1972). "Statistical properties of excited nuclei and the determination of the ground-state shell correction energies". Science Direct. 42 (4): 399–403. doi:10.1016/0370-2693(72)90091-3.
  9. ↑ S. K. Kataria; V. S. Ramamurthy & S. S. Kapoor (July 1978). "Semiempirical nuclear level density formula with shell effects". Phys. Rev. C. 19: 297. doi:10.1103/PhysRevC.18.549.
  10. ↑ "International Atomic Energy Agency Author Profile". International Atomic Energy Agency. 2015. Retrieved July 12, 2015.
  11. ↑ S. S. Kapoor; V. S. Ramamurthy (1986). Nuclear Radiation Detectors. New Age International. p. 236. ISBN 9780852264966.
  12. ↑ Saurabh Kumar; V. S. Ramamurthy (March 2015). "Pedal Power as the 21st Century Charkha". The Pioneer.
  13. ↑ "National Academy of Sciences Fellow". National Academy of Sciences. 2015. Retrieved July 12, 2015.
  14. ↑ "Indian National Academy of Engineering Fellow". Indian National Academy of Engineering. 2015. Retrieved July 12, 2015.

Further reading

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 11/1/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.