Chintamani Nagesa Ramachandra Rao,[1][2][3][4][5] (born 30 June 1934), is an Indian chemist who has worked mainly in solid-state and structural chemistry.
[9] After a transfer to Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, he returned to IISc, eventually becoming its director from 1984 to 1994.
He attended Acharya Patashala high school in Basavanagudi, which made a lasting influence on his interest in chemistry.
He studied BSc at Central College, Bangalore where he developed communication skills in English and also learned Sanskrit.
He initially thought of joining Indian Institute of Science (IISc) for a diploma or a postgraduate degree in chemical engineering, but a teacher persuaded him to attend Banaras Hindu University.
But four foreign universities, MIT, Penn State, Columbia and Purdue also offered him financial support.
[20] 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.
"[9] In 1963 he accepted a permanent position in the Department of Chemistry at the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur.
Such studies have had a profound impact in application fields such as colossal magneto resistance and high temperature superconductivity.
Rao has received numerous honorary degrees from universities worldwide in recognition of his contributions to science.
In the United States, he has received honorary doctorates from several universities, including Colorado, Northwestern, Notre Dame, Purdue, Temple, and others.
Additionally, he has been honored by Visvesvaraya Technological University, Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) at Bombay, Kharagpur, Kanpur, New Delhi, and Guwahati, and the Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research (IISERs) in Bhopal, Kolkata, Mohali, and Pune.
[63] Suchitra is married to Krishna N. Ganesh, the director of the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) at Pune, Maharashtra.
[68][69][70] 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.
[71][72] After publication the journal editors found sentences copied verbatim in the introduction and methodology from a paper published in Applied Physics Letters in 2010.
Sengupta (former professor at IISC), agreed that the plagiarised portion has no bearing on the findings,[76][77] yet Siddharthan opined that the reactions made by Rao and Krupanidhi were overboard.
[79] Written with S. Venkataprasad Bhat and Krupanidhi, Rao's paper in 2010 about the effect of nanoparticles on solar cells in Applied Physics Express[80] contains texts that are very similar to those of a paper by Matheu et al. from Applied Physics Letters in 2008,[81] which it did not even cite.
[76] 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.
[79] Rao was given a Bharat Ratna by the Government of India in spite of the controversy and was active as a professor at Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR).
[85] 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.
[88] On 17 November 2013, at a press conference following the announcement of his Bharat Ratna, he called the Indian politicians "idiots" which caused a national outrage.
"[89] In his defence Rao insisted that he merely talked about the "idiotic" way the politicians ignore investments for research funding in science.