Shivaramakrishnan Pancharatnam (9 February 1934 – 28 May 1969) was an Indian physicist who did significant work in the field of optics.

[1] His mother, Sitalaxmi [d], was C.V. Raman's sister, and his father Sivaramakrishnan [d] worked in the Indian Accounts Service.

[5] From 1964 until his death in 1969 at the age of 35 he was a Research Fellow of St Catherine's College, Oxford, working in association with George William Series.

His publications for this period were mainly concerned with the theory of effects found in experiments on optical pumping, e.g. double refraction in a gas due to spin alignment.

[6] In 1956, Pancharatnam was studying interference figures produced by light waves in crystal plates, under his advisor C. V. Raman, when he discovered the properties of what is now known as the geometric phase, and which predated Michael Berry's work on the topic from 1983.