While everyone knows about Sachin Tendulkar’s retirement and winning Bharat Ratna, India’s highest civilian award, one of the greatest brains of India also won the same.
CNR Rao is an eminent scientist and a well recognised international authority on solid state and materials chemistry. He is currently the Head of the Scientific Advisory Council to the Prime Minister of India. He has published over 1,400 research papers and 45 books. Rao’s contributions to solid state and materials chemistry have been recognized by most major scientific academies around the world through conferment of memberships and fellowships. He has been honoured with several national and international awards including Hughes Medal by the Royal Society in 2000, and he was first recipient of the India Science Award in 2004. Some of the major areas of his research are transition metal oxide systems, (new synthesis and novel structures, metal-insulator transitions, CMR materials, superconductivity, multiferroics etc), hybrid materials and nanomaterials including nanotubes and graphene.
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,Delhi and Patna, JNTU, Kalyani, Karnataka, Kolkata, Kuvempu, Lucknow, Mangalore, Manipur, Mysore, Osmania, Punjab, Roorkee, Sikkim Manipal, SRM, Tumkur, Sri Venkateswara, Vidyasagar, and Visveswaraya Technological University.
"I heard about it (award) when I was at the Thiruvananthapuram airport in Kerala to board a flight to Bangalore. I spoke to the prime minister (Prime Minister Manmohan Singh) and thanked him for the honour. I feel basic science is getting its due now," Rao told reporters at the city airport.
Urging the government to put in place enough infrastructure and allot more funds for research, he said: "India should become one of the top five countries in research. We should be able to compete with South Korea and China."
Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh telephoned Prof Rao and wished him many more years of continued service to nation and the world of science, said a press release from the Prime Minister's Office.