C. N. R.

Rao
Chintamani Nagesa Ramachandra Rao FRS (born 30
June 1934), is an Indian chemist who has worked mainly in
C. N. R. Rao

solid-state and structural chemistry. He has honorary FRS, Hon. FRSC

doctorates from 83 universities from around the world, and
has authored around 1,770 research publications and 53
books.[1] He is described as a scientist who had won all
possible awards in his field except the Nobel Prize.[2][3]

A precocious child, Rao completed BSc from Mysore

University at age seventeen, and MSc from Banaras Hindu
University at age nineteen. He earned a PhD from Purdue
University at age twenty-four. He was the youngest lecturer
when he joined the Indian Institute of Science in 1959.[4] After
a transfer to Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, he
returned to IISc, eventually becoming its Director from 1984
to 1994. He was Chair of the Scientific Advisory Council to the
Prime Minister of India during 1985 to 1989 and 2005 to Born Chintamani Nagesa
2014. He found and works in Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Ramachandra Rao

Advanced Scientific Research and International Centre for 30 June 1934

Materials Science. Bangalore, Kingdom

of Mysore, British
Rao received most important scientific awards and honours India
including the Marlow Medal, Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize
for Science and Technology, Hughes Medal, India Science Nationality Indian
Award, Dan David Prize, Royal Medal, Von Hippel Award, and Alma mater Mysore University
ENI award. He also received Padma Shri and Padma (BS)

Vibhushan from Government of India. On 16 November 2013, Banaras Hindu

the Government of India selected him for Bharat Ratna, the
University (MS)

highest civilian award in India, making him the third scientist

Purdue University
after C.V. Raman and A. P. J. Abdul Kalam[5] to receive the
(PhD)
award.[6][7][8] He received the award on 4 February 2014 from
President Pranab Mukherjee at the Rashtrapati Bhavan.[9][10] Known for Solid-state chemistry

Materials science
Awards Marlow Medal (1967)

Contents Shanti Swarup

Bhatnagar Prize for
Early life and education Science and
Career Technology (1969)

Scientific contribution Hughes Medal (2000)

India Science Award

Awards and recognition
(2004)

Major scientific awards

Dan David Prize
Scientific awards
(2005)

Indian governmental honours

Legion of Honor
Foreign honours
(2005)

Legacy
Abdus Salam Medal
Personal life (2008)

Controversies Royal Medal (2009)

Padma Shri (1974)

References
Padma Vibhushan
Further reading (1985)

External links Karnataka Ratna

(2001)

Bharat Ratna (2014)

Early life and education Order of Friendship

(2009)

C.N.R. Rao was born in a Kannada Madhva Brahmin[11] National Order of

family[12][13] in Bangalore to Hanumantha Nagesa Rao and Scientific Merit (2012)

Nagamma Nagesa Rao.[14][15] His father was an Inspector of Order of the Rising
Schools.[4] He was an only child, and his learned parents made Sun (2015)

an academic environment. He was well versed in Hindu

Von Hippel Award
literature from his mother and in English from his father at an
(2017)

early age. He did not attend elementary school but was home-
tutored by his mother, who was particularly skilled in ENI award (2021)
arithmetic and Hindu literature. He entered middle school in Scientific career
1940, at age six.[16] Although he was the youngest in his class, Fields Chemistry
he used to tutor his classmates in mathematics and English.
He passed lower secondary examination (class VII) in first Institutions Indian Space
class in 1944. He was ten years old, and his father rewarded Research
him with four annas (twenty-five paisa). He attended Acharya Organisation

Patashala high school in Basavanagudi, which made a lasting IIT Kanpur

influence on his interest in chemistry. His father enrolled him Indian Institute of
to a Kannada-medium course to encourage his mother tongue, Science

but at home used English for all conversation. He completed University of Oxford

secondary school leaving certificate in first class in 1947. He

University of
studied BSc at Central College, Bangalore. Here he developed
Cambridge

his communication skills in English and also learnt

University of
Sanskrit.[16]
California, Santa
He obtained his bachelor's degree from Mysore University in Barbara

1951, in first class, and only at the age of seventeen. He Jawaharlal Nehru
initially thought of joining Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Centre for Advanced
for a diploma or a postgraduate degree in chemical Scientific Research
engineering, but a teacher persuaded him to attend Banaras
Website www.jncasr.ac.in (htt
Hindu University.[16] He obtained a master's in chemistry
from BHU two years later.[4] In 1953 he was granted a p://www.jncasr.ac.in/c
scholarship for PhD in Indian Institute of Technology nrrao/index.html)
Kharagpur. But four foreign universities, MIT, Penn State,
Columbia and Purdue also offered him financial support. He chose Purdue. His first research
paper was published in the Agra University Journal of Research in 1954. He completed PhD in
1958, only after two years and nine months, at age twenty-four.[16]

Career
After completion of his graduate studies Rao returned to Bangalore in 1959 to take up a lecturing
position, joining IISc and embarking on an independent research program. The facility at the time
was so meager that he described it, saying, "You would get string and sealing wax and that's about
it."[4] In 1963 he accepted a permanent position in the Department of Chemistry at the Indian
Institute of Technology Kanpur. He was elected Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences in 1964.
He returned to IISc in 1976 to establish a solid state and structural chemistry unit.[16] and became
director of the IISc from 1984 to 1994. At various points in his career Rao has taken appointments
as a visiting professor at Purdue University, the University of Oxford, the University of Cambridge
and University of California, Santa Barbara. He was the Jawaharlal Nehru Professor at the
University of Cambridge and Professorial Fellow at the King's College, Cambridge during 1983–
1984.[17]

Rao has been working as the National Research Professor holding the positions Linus Pauling
Research Professor and Honorary President of Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific
Research, Bangalore, which he founded in 1989.[18] He had served as Chair of the Scientific
Advisory Council to the Indian Prime Minister for two terms, from 1985 to 1989 and from 2005 to
2014.[4] He is also the director of the International Centre for Materials Science (ICMS), which he
founded in 2010, and serves on the board of the Science Initiative Group.[19]

Scientific contribution
Rao is one of the world's foremost solid state and materials chemists. He has contributed to the
development of the field over five decades.[20] His work on transition metal oxides has led to basic
understanding of novel phenomena and the relationship between materials properties and the
structural chemistry of these materials.[21]

Rao was one of the earliest to synthesise two-dimensional oxide materials such as La2CuO4. He
was one of the first to synthesise 123 cuprate, the first liquid nitrogen-temperature superconductor
in 1987. He was also the first to synthesis Y junction carbon nanotubes in the mid-1990s.[4] His
work has led to a systematic study of compositionally controlled metal-insulator transitions. Such
studies have had a profound impact in application fields such as colossal magneto resistance and
high temperature superconductivity. Oxide semiconductors have unusual promise. He has made
immense contributions to nanomaterials over the last two decades, besides his work on hybrid
materials.[22][23]

He shares co-authorship of more than 1600 research papers and has co-authored or edited more
than 50 books.[1][20][24]

Awards and recognition

Member of many of the world's scientific associations, including the National Academy of
Sciences, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Royal Society (London, 1982), Royal
Society of Canada, French Academy, Japanese Academy, Serbian Academy of Sciences and
Arts and Polish Academy of Sciences, Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, Serbian Academy
of Sciences, Slovenian Academy of Sciences, Brazilian Academy of Sciences, Spanish Royal
Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Sciences of Korea, African Academy of Sciences,
and the American Philosophical Society. He is also member of the Pontifical Academy and
Foreign Member of Academia Europaea.
Honorary doctorates from several universities including Bordeaux, Caen, Colorado, Khartoum,
Liverpool, Northwestern, Novosibirsk, Oxford, Purdue, Stellenbosch, Universite Joseph
Fourier, Wales, Wroclaw, Notre Dame, Uppsala, Aligarh Muslim University, Anna, AP, Banaras,
Bengal Engineering, Bangalore, Burdwan, Bundelkhand, Delhi, Hyderabad, IGNOU, IIT
Bombay, Kharagpur, Delhi, Patna, JNTU, Kalyani, Karnataka, Kolkata, Kuvempu, Lucknow,
Mangalore, Manipur, Mysore, Osmania, Punjab, Roorkee, Sikkim Manipal, SRM, Tumkur, Sri
Venkateswara, Vidyasagar, Amity University, Gurgaon[25] and Visveswaraya Technological
University.[20][17]

Major scientific awards

 1967: Marlow Medal by the Faraday Society of England[26]
1968: Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology in Chemical Science[26]
2000: Centenary Medal of the Royal Society of Chemistry, London[26]
2000: Hughes Medal by the Royal Society[26]
2004: India Science Award[27]
2005: Dan David Prize from Tel Aviv University[28] shared with George Whitesides and Robert
Langer.[29]
2008: Abdus Salam Medal by The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS)[30]
2009: Royal Medal by the Royal Society[26]
2010: August-Wilhelm-von-Hofmann Medal by the German Chemical Society[31]
2017: The Von Hippel Award by the Materials Research Society[32]
2021: International ENI award 2020 for research into renewable energy sources and energy
storage, also called the Energy Frontier award[33]

Scientific awards
1961: DSc from Mysore University.
1973: Yedanapalli Medal and Prize[34]
1975: C. V. Raman Award in Physical Science by the University Grants Commission of
India[34]
1980: S. N. Bose Medal by the Indian National Science Academy[35]
1981: Royal Society of Chemistry (London) Medal[36]
1981: Founding member of the World Cultural Council[37]
1989: Hevrovsky Gold Medal of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences[35]
1990: Meghnath Saha Medal of the Indian National Science Academy
1996: Einstein Gold Medal of UNESCO[26]
2004: Doctor of Science from University of Calcutta.[38]
2004: Somiya Award of the International Union of Materials Research.
2008: Nikkei Asia Prize for Science, Technology and Innovation, by Nihon Keizai Shimbun,
Inc., Japan.[39]
2008: Khwarizmi International Award 2008 for Innovation along with Ajayan Vinu[40]
2011: Ernesto Illy Trieste Science Prize for materials research[26]
2013: 2012 Award for International Scientific Cooperation from the Chinese Academy of
Sciences[41]
2013: Elected honorary foreign member of Chinese Academy of Sciences[42]
2013: Distinguished Academician Award from IIT Patna[43]
2018: Platinum Medal from Indian Association of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology[44][45]
2019: The first Sheikh Saud International Prize for Materials Research from the Center for
Advanced Materials of the United Arab Emirates[46]
Foreign fellow of Bangladesh Academy of Sciences[35]

Indian governmental honours

Padma Shri in 1974
Padma Vibhushan in 1985
Bharat Ratna in 2014[9][10]
 Karnataka Ratna by the Karnataka State Government in 2000[47][48]

Foreign honours
Great Cross of the National Order of Scientific Merit from the President of Brazil in 2002[36]
Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur (Knight of the Legion of Honour, France) in 2005[36]
Order of Friendship by the President of Russia in 2009[49]
Order of the Rising Sun (Gold and Silver Star) of Japan in 2015

Legacy
Rao with his wife established the CNR Rao Education Foundation using the Dan David Prize
money.[50] The foundation is based in Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific
Research and offers Best Science Teacher Award to pre-university and high school science
teachers.[51]
Rao established the International Centre for Materials Science (ICMS) which offers the C N R
Rao Prize Lecture in Advanced Materials since 2010.[52]
The World Academy of Sciences instituted the TWAS-C.N.R. Rao Award for Scientific
Research since 2006 for scientists in least developed countries.[53]
The Shanmugha Arts, Science, Technology & Research Academy has created the SASTRA-
CNR Rao Award for Chemistry and Material Science in 2014.[54]

Personal life
Rao is married to Indumati Rao in 1960. They have two children, Sanjay and Suchitra. Sanjay
works as a science populariser in schools around Bangalore.[55] Suchitra is married to Krishna N.
Ganesh, the Director of the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) at Pune,
Maharashtra.[56] Rao is technophobic and he never checks his email by himself. He also said that
he uses the mobile phone only to talk to his wife.[57]

Controversies
In 1987, Rao and his team published a series of four papers, of which three were in the
Proceedings of the Indian Academy of Sciences (Chemical Science), Pramana, and Current
Science, all published by the Indian Academy of Sciences.[58] A report was submitted to the Society
for Scientific Values that the three papers had no mention of the dates of receipt, which were
normally explicitly mentioned in those journals.[59] Upon inquiry, it was found that the paper
manuscripts were actually received after the date of publication, indicating that they were
backdated. The society declared the case as "Use of Wrong Means to Claim Priority."[58]

Rao has been subject of allegations on plagiarism.[60][61][62] Rao and Saluru Baba Krupanidhi at
the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, with their students Basant Chitara and L. S.
Panchakarla, published a paper "Infrared photodetectors based on reduced graphene oxide and
graphene nanoribbons" in the journal Advanced Materials in 2011.[63][64] After publication the
journal editors found sentences copied verbatim in the introduction and methodology from a
paper published in Applied Physics Letters in 2010.[65] According to Nature report, it was Basant
Chitara, a PhD student at IISc, who wrote the text.[66] An apology was issued by the authors later
in the same journal.[67] Rao said that he did read the manuscript and that it was an oversight on
his part as he focused mainly on the results and discussion.[66]
Scientists such as Rahul Siddharthan (Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai), Y.B. Srinivas
(Institute of Wood Science and Technology), and D.P. Sengupta (former professor at IISC), agreed
that the plagiarised portion has no bearing on the findings,[68][69] yet Siddharthan opined that the
reactions made by Rao and Krupanidhi were overboard. Rao and Krupanidhi publicly blamed
Chitara, and denied the publication as not a plagiarism.[68] Rao had commented, "This should not
be really considered as plagiarism, but an instance of copying of a few sentences in the text." He
even extended the blame to Krupanidhi asserting that he had no role in it as it was written by
Krupanidhi without his knowledge.[70] His claims were not justified by the fact that he was the
senior scientist and corresponding author in that publication.[63][68]

More allegations of instances of plagiarism in articles co-authored Rao have been reported.[71]
Written with S. Venkataprasad Bhat and Krupanidhi, Rao's paper in 2010 about the effect of
nanoparticles on solar cells in Applied Physics Express[72] contains texts that are very similar to
those of a paper by Matheu et al. from Applied Physics Letters in 2008,[73] which it did not even
cite.[68] Rao had stated, referring to the 2011 incident, that "[If] I have ever stolen an idea or a
result (in) my entire life, (then) hang me."[74] But Rao's article contains similar study to and
duplicated figures with that of Matheu et al.[68] An article in the Journal of Luminescence in 2011,
written with Chitara, Nidhi Lal and Krupanidhi,[75] contains 20 unattributed lines which appear to
be copied from articles by Itskos et al. in Nanotechnology (June 2009 issue) and Heliotis et al. in
Advanced Materials (January 2006 issue). Another article in Nanotechnology, written also with
Chitara and Krupanidhi,[76] uses six lines from the 1995 article by Huang et al. in Applied Physics
Letters.[71]

Rao was given a Bharat Ratna by Government of India in spite of the controversy and was active as
a Professor at Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR).[77] In
December 2013, brother and sister Tanaya Thakur, a law student, and Aditya Thakur, a class XII
student, filed a public interest litigation in Allahabad High Court, Lucknow Bench, to challenge
Rao's Bharat Ratna. They asserted that "a scientist with proven cases of plagiarism shall not be
presented the highest civilian award."[78] But the court ruled them out as "filing pleas for
publicity."[79] There was another plea to revoke the award in 2015, but the Central Information
Commission dismissed the petition.[80]

On 17 November 2013, at a press conference following the announcement of his Bharat Ratna, he
called the Indian politicians "idiots" that caused a national outrage. He said, "Why the hell have
these idiots [politicians] given so little to us despite what we have done. For the money that the
government has given us we [scientists] have done much more."[81] In his defence Rao insisted
that he merely talked about the "idiotic" way the politicians ignore investments for research
funding in science.[82]

References
1. https://jncasr.irins.org/profile/2645#other_information_panel
2. Sathyamurthy, N.; Rao, C. N. R. (2019). "Face to Face with Professor C N R Rao".
Resonance. 24 (7): 775–791. doi:10.1007/s12045-019-0840-2 (https://doi.org/10.1007%2Fs12
045-019-0840-2). S2CID 201041154 (https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:201041154).
3. Pulakkat, Hari (18 November 2013). "Bharat Ratna nominee CNR Rao won all possible
awards but the Nobel prize" (https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/bh
arat-ratna-nominee-cnr-rao-won-all-possible-awards-but-the-nobel-prize/articleshow/2595958
2.cms). The Economic Times. Retrieved 3 March 2020.
4. Ganguli, A.K.; Ramakrishnan, T.V. (2016). "Living Legends in Indian Science: C.N.R. Rao" (htt
ps://www.currentscience.ac.in/Volumes/111/05/0926.pdf) (PDF). Current Science. 111 (5):
926–931.