Echur Varadadesikan Sampathkumaran (born 6 December 1954) is an Indian condensed matter physicist and a Distinguished Professor at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research.
[3] During this period, he enrolled at the University of Mumbai for doctoral studies on valence fluctuations in rare-earth compounds and secured a PhD in 1982, guided by Ramanuja Vijayaraghavan, a Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar laureate.
He did his post-doctoral work on valence fluctuations as an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at the Free University of Berlin, under the guidance of G. Kaindl, during 1983–84 and returned to TIFR to resume his career there.
Barring two sabbaticals, the first as an Indo-Waseda Exchange Visitor for two months in 1988 to Japan and the other, a two-month stint at Paderborn University in 1996, his entire career was spent at TIFR, holding various positions.
[3] Sampathkumaran's early research was focused on intermetallics and oxides, with regard to their solid state properties and his work led to the identification of new fluctuating-valent rare-earth systems.