Inaugural Centenary Lecture: The Birth of a Discipline

The Council of the Indian Institute of Science had decided to institute a Centenary Lecture Series to be delivered by the most distinguished scientists of the world to mark this milestone in the history of the institute. Prof P Balaram, Director IISc, did not have to look very far afield to find the Inaugural Lecturer in Prof Chintamani Nageswara Ramachandra Rao. Prof Rao, as Director of the Institute, charted new directions and took it to great heights. His lecture on January 24, 2008 was about his accomplishment in the creation of a new discipline, Solid State Chemistry, at the Institute and indeed in the world. In the talk entitled “Tall Oaks from Little Acorns: Birth and Growth of Solid State and Materials Chemistry”, he gave a passionate account of his early struggles and the later triumphs, as he helped define the contours of this new subject. He evoked “the power of poverty” as in his beginning research phase there were no facilities. These were more than made up by imaginative questions on simple but yet contemporary topics that attracted the immediate attention of the scientific world. This was reminiscent of Rutherford who had stated that “he did not have money, therefore he had to think”. Rao never looked back after this early success. He ventured into new areas and created molecules and materials covering a fascinating array of high temperature superconductors, colossal magneto-resistance materials, inorganic-organic hybrids, fullerenes, nanotubes, indeed a whole galaxy of nanomaterials. Through it all he had made full use of his dexterity in chemistry and his early love of transition metal oxides, which showed metallic character. Palpable was his admiration for Michael Faraday, Linus Pauling and Nevill Mott. He ended his lecture with his most recent work on graphene ― a simple single sheet of carbon that promises mystery in physics and magic in chemistry. The cavernous JN Tata Auditorium was full, with standing room only. This audience listened in pin-drop silence with rapt attention and savoured every moment of the fifty minutes of the lecture, with each minute breathing the intensity of a year of work by Prof Rao. The silence was broken finally by the richly deserved thundering standing ovation that the lecturer received.

S. Ranganathan