Prof
CNR Rao: A Conversation
Chintamani
Nagesa Ramachandra Rao is among the most prolific scientists in the
world with over 1700 research publications and having guided over 150
PhDs. He has been a pioneer in several areas of material science and
is now doing cutting edge work and setting new trends in nanoscience.
After having done outstanding work in spectroscopy, High Temperature
Super Conductivity, Colossal magneto-resistance, graphenes, inorganic
nano tubes and so on. The octogenarian continues to enthusiastically
sally forth in photosynthesis and producing Hydrogen through novel
routes. He has been the chairman of Scientific Advisory Committee to
Prime Ministers Rajiv Gandhi and later Dr Manmohan Singh and been
responsible for a number of science initiatives of those regimes.
Shivanand Kanavi conversed with him in the verdant campus of
Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, Bangalore,
about his science and his experiences as science advisor to Prime
Ministers.
(Excerpts of this appeared in Prajavani, Business India and Rediff.com)
What or who inspired
you to go for science?
I was excited by science even when I was very
young. I met Prof. CV Raman while in school. I talked to him and visited his
laboratory in 1944-45, almost 70 years ago. I was already in high school at
that time since I started school very young. When I finished my BSc I wanted to
go for research. The idea of research papers published with people’s names on
them, fascinated me. I had never seen such a thing. I asked many teachers about
research problems but they were not doing anything exciting in the
undergraduate college. They were not encouraging either and said “you are just
a BSc student”. That is why I went to BHU.
What about your parents?
They allowed me to do whatever I wanted to do.
They never interfered with my plans for studies. There was no pressure to do
IAS, engineering etc. unlike today. My father was in the education dept and he
trusted my choices.
When I said I want to go to BHU and not study
in Bangalore he said fine.
Why did you choose BHU?
BHU had MSc with part course work and part
research thesis. Bombay University had MSc by research only. I thought I needed
to do some course work along with research. At BHU, I read the book by Linus
Pauling, “Nature of the Chemical Bond” where he had talked about electronic
structure of molecules. It made me really excited about chemistry.
Why did you choose Chemistry and not Physics?
I was much better in Physics than in Chemistry
as an undergraduate. I had 75% average in theory, which was difficult in those
days. Especially I liked Physical Chemistry. When I went to US I chose Chemical
Physics with Physics as minor and Physical Chemistry as major. Pauling had replied
to me that he was not working on molecular structure anymore but one of his
students at Purdue was doing it. So I decided to go to Purdue. I got teaching
assistantships from MIT and Columbia but I did not understand what TA meant.
There was no one to guide me. In 1954 there were very few Indians in the US. I
thought what I needed was research assistantship or fellowship. Purdue gave me a
research assistantship. However, it turned out that I had to work in the
laboratory of a professor who was an organic chemist. The work had nothing to
do with my PhD thesis. He was a good person and wanted me to do some
spectroscopy and kinetics based on his compounds. This made me learn a lot of
spectroscopy and kinetics. I published several papers with him.
Did you do any experimental work there?
Yes of course. I am an experimentalist. I have
built a very good lab here now. Today we need not go to MIT or Harvard. It was
not always like that. I did my PhD on electron diffraction in gases. I also did
some X ray crystallography and all kinds of spectroscopy. It was a very busy
period of three years. I published around 20-22 papers by the time I had my
PhD. About ten of these were in electron diffraction and about 8 were in
spectroscopy. My PhD advisor was a nice man. He knew that I was publishing with
other Professors as well, but he did not mind it. I published with 5-6 other
professors.
Whenever I heard a problem posed in my class
or seminar, I would find out if it had been solved earlier. I would do some
work on it and publish it after showing it to the persons concerned. I was
helping other students of my advisor since he was busy with administration. If
you see the third edition of Pauling’s “Nature of the Chemical Bond”, you will
see two of the structures solved by me cited there. I went to Berkley for my
Post-Doctoral work and had a wonderful time. I was getting several offers as an
Assistant Professor in the US, but I thought if I accepted a faculty offer
there, then I may not come back. In India I got offers from a CSIR laboratory,
Indian Institute of Science and Punjab University.
Why did you choose to come back to India?
Oh, I belonged to a nationalist family. I used
to wear a Khadar cap till my BSc. Even when I was 12-13, I had participated in the
independence movement. I decided to come back also to make my parents happy. I
joined IISc and worked there for 4 years. Six students got PhDs working with
me.
How many PhDs have you produced so far? Tell
us a little about your early days in India.
Around 140-150. When I was 26, I wrote my
first book on Ultra Violet and Visible Spectroscopy, which has been translated
into 5 or 6 languages. Then, another book of mine on Infrared Spectroscopy came
out when I had just joined IIT Kanpur. It was all about how to use spectroscopy
in Chemistry. I became a Professor in IIT Kanpur when I was not yet 30. That is
when Prof. C V Raman wrote to me and asked me to be a member of the science
academy of which he was president. IISc did not have any spectrometers and he
had allowed me to do some experiments in his laboratory.
All the great names of Indian science,
including people like Meghnad Saha and S N Bose, stopped doing research at a
relatively young age. Two persons who worked in science till the end were
Jagdish Chandra Bose and C V Raman. I admire such people more than those who do
one great thing and stop.
IIT Kanpur was wonderful. We perhaps had the
best chemistry department in India. In 1976, I left IITK. I almost left India
at that time. The level at which I was doing research in Kanpur was not
satisfying. There were one or two spectrometers which had to be shared by many
people. I had done a lot of research at Oxford using (electron microscopy) and
other sophisticated instruments in 1973-1974. I then decided to build a
facility second to none in India. At that time Satish Dhawan, who was Director
of IISc told me “why do you want to leave India, come back to IISc and build a
new Chemistry department from scratch”. I accepted and I built a new solid
state and structural chemistry and material research laboratory at IISc. I was
able to build reasonable facilities. I got my first electron microscope then.
Eventually, I had the chance to build this
centre, which has excellent facilities.
How
did Jawaharlal Nehru Center for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR) come into
being?
A Nehru centenary committee with R
Venkataraman at the head had been set up. Some of us suggested that we should
have a small centre in Nehru’s name which would do interdisciplinary research.
I was then chairman of Science Advisory Council to Rajiv Gandhi at that time.
One day, I got a call that this idea had been accepted. People wanted to take
it to Pune or UP. I suggested Bangalore. Today, it is one of the best in the
India especially after the International Centre for Material Science came up. I
had to wait a long time in my life for good facilities for research. Young
people cannot complain now that there is no facility in India which is world
class in Material Science.
How
did you raise funds?
We have raised money from various sources
besides the modest sum that we get from the central government. For example a
Shaikh from the Emirates gave Rs 15 crores as a grant to do whatever we want to
do in science! Unfortunately no Indian industrialist has given like that.
In the evolution of your scientific interests what
is the significance of spectroscopy?
Even now I use a lot of spectroscopy but now I
am working mainly on the chemistry of advanced materials. I realized long ago
that one could not compete with the rest of the world in high resolution
spectroscopy etc. So, I chose a subject which would be of global quality but
new, and hence, the chemistry of solids. It was a lonely road. Now, of course,
I am called the grandfather of the subject. I have worked on various types of
research problems in this area.
For a lay person how would you explain what is
solid state and materials chemistry as opposed to solid state physics?
We make novel materials with interesting
properties, like Graphene for example which is a one atom thick sheet of carbon
atoms. Molybdenum sulphide nanosheets have now become a bigger attraction than
graphene. I have just written a frontier article on it.
Why are they interesting?
They have novel electronic and magnetic
properties. The topic is spreading like wild fire. I had been to Japan recently
to deliver a lecture on this.
How did you get interested in transition metal
oxides?
There are so many interesting things happening
in the oxide area because of the d-electrons. I have written many papers and
books on oxides. I still work on oxides.
Was High Temperature Super Conductivity (HTSC)
a byproduct of this?
I had already worked on 2-dimensional oxides.
Some people had laughed at me at that time. In fact one referee of an American
journal wrote, “why is Prof Rao so obsessed with 2-dimensional oxides”. Lo and
behold, it was a 2-dimentional copper oxide that showed high temperature
superconductivity later! I worked on such oxides in IIT Kanpur and later at IISc
Bangalore.
I have also worked on multiferroic oxides,
which combine ferroelectric and ferromagnetic properties. Colossal
magnetoresistance was found in one of the manganese oxides that I had worked
long ago. I had done considerable work on these oxides. I also work on
sulphides.
I got into research on fullerenes in 1990. In
1991, within 2 months of the discovery of carbon nanotubes, I had set up a lab
here to study them. They can be metallic
or semiconducting. Last year I took a US patent on the separation of
semiconducting and metallic carbon nanotubes. Graphene and nanotubes have many
applications in electronics and other areas. I also work on inorganic nanotubes
(e.g. of Boron Nitride, Molybdenum Sulphide). Nanosheets have become a big
area. I also work on nanowires and nanoparticles.
Do they exhibit different physics?
Size alone is enough to lead to different
properties. For example, we made a major discovery 8 years ago at JNCASR that
all nanoparticles are ferromagnetic, no matter of which material! Nanoparticles
of even zinc oxide and aluminum oxide with no d-electrons exhibit
ferromagnetism.
I have heard that recently you got interested
in photosynthesis.
Yes, I have a few young students doing
wonderful work here on splitting water and to produce hydrogen by artificial
photosynthesis. This is the best way to make hydrogen.
Can you explain it in simple terms?
Plants take water in the air and then using
photosystem-2 (where light is absorbed exciting an electron and creating a
hole) decompose water to oxygen and photons. Eventually, in photosystem-1 the
protons get reduced. Plants do not produce hydrogen but sugars. In our lab, we
use the same mechanism to produce hydrogen and we are able to produce quite a
lot of it at highly competitive rates, compared to what is going on globally in
this field. We use ordinary sunlight (or a 100 W lamp) for this purpose. I use
semiconductor nanostructures or nanosheets of simple inorganic materials for
splitting water. For example in one experiment, we have used MoS2 nanosheets. Unlike electrolysis we do not use
any electrical energy.
I heard that recently funds have been cut for
research at various institutions.
This is not true. What happened last year was
that all expenditure was cut by 10% by the previous government. In a small
institute like ours, they cut 10 cr in a total budget of 50 cr! Approved
funding was cut suddenly and we had already ordered equipment etc. I hope it
will be rectified this year by the new government. I keep telling the
authorities that for a small institution like this which is producing good work;
they should not cut funding even if they cannot increase it.
What has been your experience as chairman of
PM’s scientific advisory council?
I have had good experience. I am not a
politician and I cannot give speeches about things, but a lot of good things
have been done in science by the previous governments. Five IISERs(Indian
Institute of Science Education and Research) were started. Similarly, how do
you think the Fast Breeder Reactor is going on line, or new rockets are going
up with the cryogenic engine? We even got a Rs 5000 crore grant for building a
Peta Flop supercomputer. Elections muddied the scene somewhat. Nobody wanted to
hear anything positive. Look at Pune ISER. It is the best among the lot and
with excellent undergraduate science education.
Have
you met the new Prime Minister?
I have met Mr. Modi, our new PM, for half an
hour. It was a nice meeting. He asked me to give a note on science and
education in the country. I prepared it and sent it to him. I got a nice note
from him thanking me. I expect great things to happen under our new PM, Mr.
Modi.
I have never wanted to work in the government
and become a Secretary to Government or a Rajya Sabha MP. I was offered a Rajya
Sabha seat two or three times and I declined. Way back in 1975 when I was in
IIT Kanpur, Mrs. Indira Gandhi offered to make me a secretary. When I said ‘No’
she was surprised. I felt that I was too young to be a secretary to Government.
I want to do good science, and not become an official.
How was it with VP Singh, P V NarasimhaRao, Vajpayee
or Manmohan Singh?
There was no SAC to PM under Mr. Narasimha Rao
or the others you mentioned. Under Dr. Manmohan Singh, I was once againChairman
SAC and we could do a few important things. I used to meet him once in 6-8
weeks. He often said, “Prof Rao you assume that you have my approval and carry
on”. He was shy and decent. He is a real gentleman.
What are your scientific interests now?
Artificial photosynthesis and physics and
chemistry based on inorganic nanosheets are two areas. The nanosheets exhibit
surprising properties. Then, there are some other new areas that I am working
on. Science keeps me going at 80. I feel young.
ಚಿಂತಾಮಣಿ ನಾಗೇಶ ರಾಮಚಂದ್ರ ರಾವ್ ವಿಶ್ವದ ಪ್ರಮುಖ ವಿಜ್ಞಾನಿಗಳಲ್ಲಿ ಒಬ್ಬರು. 1700ಕ್ಕೂ ಹೆಚ್ಚು ಸಂಶೋಧನೆಗಳ ಪ್ರಕಟಣೆ, 150ಕ್ಕೂ ಹೆಚ್ಚು ಪಿಎಚ್.ಡಿ. ಮಹಾಪ್ರಬಂಧಗಳ ಮಾರ್ಗದರ್ಶಕರು ಅವರು. ವಸ್ತು ವಿಜ್ಞಾನ ಅಥವಾ ಮೆಟೀರಿಯಲ್ ಸೈನ್ಸ್ನ ಹಲವು ಕ್ಷೇತ್ರಗಳಲ್ಲಿ ಅವರ ಕೆಲಸ ಪ್ರಧಾನವಾದದ್ದು ಹಾಗೂ ಅವರೀಗ ನ್ಯಾನೊ ವಿಜ್ಞಾನದಲ್ಲಿ ಹೊಸ ಟ್ರೆಂಡ್ಗಳನ್ನು ಹುಟ್ಟುಹಾಕಲು ಅವುಡುಗಚ್ಚಿ ಕೆಲಸ ಮಾಡುವುದರಲ್ಲಿ ನಿರತರಾಗಿದ್ದಾರೆ. ಸ್ಪೆಕ್ಟ್ರೋಸ್ಕೊಪಿ (ರೋಹಿತಗಳ ಅಧ್ಯಯನ), ಹೈ ಟೆಂಪರೇಚರ್ ಸೂಪರ್ ಕಂಡಕ್ಟಿವಿಟಿ (ಅತ್ಯುಷ್ಣ ವಾಹಕಗಳಿಗೆ ಸಂಬಂಧಿಸಿದ ಅಧ್ಯಯನ), ಕೊಲೊಸಿಯಲ್ ಮ್ಯಾಗ್ನೆಟೊ ರೆಸಿಸ್ಟೆನ್ಸ್ (ಬೃಹತ್ ಅಯಸ್ಕಾಂತೀಯ ತಾಳಿಕೆ), ಗ್ರಾಫೀನ್ಸ್, ಇನಾರ್ಗ್ಯಾನಿಕ್ (ನಿರವಯವ) ಸೇರಿದಂತೆ ನ್ಯಾನೊ ನಳಿಕೆಗಳಿಗೆ ಸಂಬಂಧಿಸಿದಂತೆ ಅಸಾಮಾನ್ಯ ಸಾಧನೆ ಮಾಡಿರುವ ಅವರು, ದ್ಯುತಿ ಸಂಶ್ಲೇಷಣೆ ಹಾಗೂ ನೀರಿನ ಕಣಗಳನ್ನು ವಿಭಜಿಸುವ ಹೊಸ ಮಾರ್ಗದ ಸಂಶೋಧನೆಗಳಲ್ಲಿ ಎಂಬತ್ತರ ಇಳಿ ವಯಸ್ಸಿನಲ್ಲಿಯೂ ಉತ್ಸಾಹದಿಂದ ತೊಡಗಿಕೊಂಡಿದ್ದಾರೆ. ರಾಜೀವ್ ಗಾಂಧಿ ಹಾಗೂ ಆನಂತರ ಮನಮೋಹನ್ ಸಿಂಗ್ ಪ್ರಧಾನಿಗಳಾಗಿದ್ದಾಗ ಪ್ರಧಾನ ಮಂತ್ರಿಗಳ ವೈಜ್ಞಾನಿಕ ಸಲಹಾ ಸಮಿತಿಯ ಅಧ್ಯಕ್ಷರಾಗಿದ್ದ ರಾವ್, ಆಗ ವಿಜ್ಞಾನ ಸಂಬಂಧಿ ಅನೇಕ ಯೋಜನೆಗಳು ಪ್ರಾರಂಭವಾಗಲು ಕಾರಣೀಭೂತರಾದವರು. ಬೆಂಗಳೂರಿನ ಜವಾಹರಲಾಲ್ ನೆಹರೂ ಉನ್ನತ ವೈಜ್ಞಾನಿಕ ಸಂಶೋಧನಾ ಕೇಂದ್ರದ ಆವರಣದಲ್ಲಿ ಪ್ರಧಾನಿಗಳ ವೈಜ್ಞಾನಿಕ ಸಲಹಾ ಸಮಿತಿಯ ಅಧ್ಯಕ್ಷರಾಗಿದ್ದಾಗಿನ ಅನುಭವಗಳ ಬಗೆಗೆ ರಾವ್ ಅವರನ್ನು ಶಿವಾನಂದ ಕಣವಿ ಮಾತನಾಡಿಸಿದ್ದಾರೆ. ಸಂದರ್ಶನದ ಆಯ್ದ ಭಾಗ ಇಲ್ಲಿದೆ....
ಸಂದರ್ಶಕ ಶಿವಾನಂದ ಕಣವಿ ಥಿಯರಿಟಿಕಲ್ ಫಿಸಿಸಿಸ್ಟ್ ಹಾಗೂ ಬಿಸಿನೆಸ್ ಪತ್ರಕರ್ತ. ಟಾಟಾ ಕನ್ಸಲ್ಟೆನ್ಸಿ ಸರ್ವಿಸಸ್ನಲ್ಲಿ ಉಪಾಧ್ಯಕ್ಷರಾಗಿಯೂ ಅವರು ಕೆಲಸ ಮಾಡಿದ್ದರು. ‘ಸ್ಯಾಂಡ್ ಟು ಸಿಲಿಕಾನ್’ ಹಾಗೂ ‘ರಿಸರ್ಚ್ ಬೈ ಡಿಸೈನ್: ಇನೊವೇಷನ್ ಅಂಡ್ ಟಿಸಿಎಸ್’ ಎಂಬ ಕೃತಿಗಳನ್ನೂ ಬರೆದಿದ್ದಾರೆ. ಅವರ ಇ-ಮೇಲ್: 