Har Gobind Khorana

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Har Gobind Khorana (9 January 1922 – 9 November 2011), was an Indian-American biochemist who shared the 1968 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Marshall W. Nirenberg and Robert W. Holley for research that showed how the order of nucleotides in nucleic acids, which carry the genetic code of the cell, control the cell’s synthesis of proteins. Khorana and Nirenberg were also awarded the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize from Columbia University in the same year.



Khorana was born in Raipur, British India (today Tehsil Kabirwala, Punjab, Pakistan) and later moved to become an Indian citizen after the partition of 1947. 



Fields 




  • Molecular biology



Institutions




  • MIT (1970–2007)

  • University of Wisconsin, Madison (1960–70)

  • University of British Columbia (1952–60)

  • University of Cambridge (1950–52)

  • Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich (1948–49)



Notable awards




  • Nobel Prize in Medicine (1968)

  • Gairdner Foundation International Award (1980)

  • Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize

  • ForMemRS (1978)

  • Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research

  • Padma Vibhushan

  • Willard Gibbs Award



 To read more about Har Gobind Khorana  Click https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Har_Gobind_Khorana


Vasant Gowarikar

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Dr. Vasant Ranchhod Gowarikar (25 March 1933 – 2 January 2015) was an Indian scientist. He was the chief of Indian Space Research Organization and also the scientific advisor to the Prime Minister of India in 1991–1993.Gowarikar made valuable contributions to the fields of space research, weather and population. He was well known for his monsoon forecast model as he was the first scientist to develop an indigenous weather forecasting model that predicted the monsoon correctly.



Awards




  • Gowarikar was awarded Padma Shri in 1984

  • Padma Bhushan in 2008.

  •  He also received the Fie Foundation Award.



Career



He had worked with the Indian Space Research Organization  Gowarikar was involved in space research in early career under Vikram Sarabhai when his office was in the building of the local St Mary Magdalene Church in Thumba in Kerala. He pioneered solid propellant development and later served as Director of the Vikram Sarabhai  Space Centre (VSSC) between 1979 and 1985.



Gowarikar also served as the scientific advisor to Prime Minister of India P.V. Narasimha Rao from 1991 to 1993. He had also been the Secretary of Department of Science and Technology.



He was appointed as Vice-Chancellor,Pune University and was chairman of the Marathi Vidnyan Parishad between 1994 and 2000. Gowarikar, along with his associates, also compiled The Fertilizer Encyclopedia (2008) that featured 4,500 entries detailing the chemical composition of fertilizers, and containing information on everything from their manufacturing and application to their economic and environmental considerations.



To read more about Vasant Gowarikar Click https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasant_Gowarikar


Ashok Das

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Ashok Das (born March 23, 1953) is an Indian American theoretical physicist, an author and award winning teacher of Physics. He is professor of physics at University of  Rochester  and  Ajunct professor of Physics at Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, Kolkata and India and Institute of Physics, Bhabaneswar, India.


 


 Das was born in  Puri, Odisha. He received his BS (honours) in 1972 and MS in 1974 in physics from University of Delhi. He did his graduate studies in supersymmetry and supergravity at State University of New York at Stony Brook. He received his PhD (Spin 3/2 Fields and Supergravity Theories) in 1977.


 


He was a research associate at the City College of New York, the University of Maryland and at Rutgers University before joining the University of Rochester in 1982. He was promoted to professor in 1993 and is still there. He is also the adjunct professor of physics at Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics in India.


 


Das' research is in the area of theoretical high energy physics. He works on supersymmetry and supergravity. In recent years, he has worked extensively on non-linear integrable systems, which are systems which in spite of their complicated appearance can be exactly solved. He has also been working on finite temperature field theories, generalization of the Standard Model to incorporate CP violation, and problems in quantum field theory and string theory.


 


Institutions:



  • University of Rochester

  • Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, Kolkata



Fields



  • Theoretical Physics



Awards



  • William H.Riker University Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching (2006)

  • Fulbright Fellowship (1997, 2006)

  • Rockefeller Foundation Award (2004)

  • Department of Energy Outstanding Junior Investigator (1983-1989)

  • Edward Peck Curtis Award (1991)



To know more about Ashok Das Click  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashok_Das 


Patcha Ramachandra Rao

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Patcha Ramachandra Rao (21 March 1942 – 10 January 2010) was a metallurgist and administrator. He has the unique distinction of being the only Vice-Chancellor (2002–05) of the Banaras Hindu University (BHU) who was also a student (1963–68) and faculty (1964–92) at that institution. From 1992 to 2002, Rao was the Director of the National Metallurgical Laboratory Jamshedpur. After his tenure as Vice-Chancellor of B.H.U., in 2005, he took the reins of the Defence Institute of Advanced Technology (DIAT) as its first Vice-Chancellor. He was to serve DIAT until his superannuation in 2007. From 2007 till the end, Rao was a Raja Ramanna Fellow at the International Advanced Research Centre for Powder Metallurgy and New Materials, in Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh.



Institutions




  • Indian Institute of Technology (BHU)

  • National Metallurgical Laboratory

  • Defence Institute of Advanced Technology

  • Indian Institute of Science, Osmania University?



Fields




  • Metallurgy

  • Material science

  • Engineering



Awards




  • Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize (1985)

  • National Metallurgist Award (2004)

  • Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Gold Medal. INSA (2005)?



Honorary positions



·        President, The Asia-Pacific Academy of Materials (APAM), India Chapter



·        President, Indian Institute of Metals



·        Vice-President, Materials Research Society of India



·        Vice-President, Indian National Science Academy, New Delhi.



·        Sectional President, Materials Science Section, Indian Science Congress



 



To know more about Patcha Ramachandra Rao Click  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patcha_Ramachandra_Rao