Chintamani Nagesa Ramachandra Rao Quotes

Even metals offer some resistance for the passage of electricity. Some materials conduct electricity without any resistance. Such materials are called superconductors.

Fifty years is a very long period. The first 30–35 years – we could call this period as one when India equipped itself to face important problems. For example, we built institutions such as the IITs and the National Laboratories...We need much better infrastructure facilities and we must work on more difficult problems. Unfortunately, we have been used to working on problems that are somewhat repetitive. If we want to be at the cutting edge, we have to be innovators and originators.

The Maharaja of Mysore (then Governor of Mysore), ayachamarajendra Wodeyar, visited Berkeley for a day. I took him around. He was really impressed when he saw the accelerators in the Radiation Laboratory on the hill. He was happy to speak to me in Kannada and even more happy that I knew a little Sanskrit.

I feel basic science is getting its due now. I used to say earlier that Dr Homi Bhabha should get this honour and also some other eminent researchers. Scientists work very, very had but rarely get recognition. I have been working for 62 years. I was 17 when I started my research. I am going to be 80 soon.

Atoms were originally proposed as an idea. Although their presence was proved by various means, people did not think that they could see them directly. This was so until recently. We are now able to directly see atoms by employing powerful microscopic techniques.

The Berkeley campus was academically overpowering. In the Tuesday evening colloquia, one would see a galaxy of chemists in the front row, with many Nobel Laureates and members of the National Academy of Science amongst them. It was a daunting task to give talks at these meetings. I managed to survive those occasions.

Since there was no infrared spectrometer, I managed to record routine infrared spectra of certain compounds here and there, in order to categorize group frequencies. One of these papers became a citation classic.

Build a strong base. The journey to peaks of excellence requires a strong base camp.

Our society has created a bunch of icons and role models who are distorting not just the future of this city [Bangalore] but of all India, and of our sense of values. Our people have lost respect for scholarship. Money and commerce has taken over. If IT is going to take away our basic values, then you can burn Bangalore and burn IT.

Philosophers of ancient Greece and India sought an answer to this question [What is matter made of] centuries before Christ.

Prof Rao said he visited the Nobel prize-winning scientist’s (C.V.Raman} laboratory in Bengaluru first as an 11 year-old school boy. “He was the first to recognize my interest in science and has given me a lot of encouragement. He made me a member of the Indian Academy of Sciences when I was only 30. I can never be equal to him.

Music for me is therapeutic.

Those days, poor teachers and poor policemen alone would have maximum children. But my father believed in a sort of family planning. He was known as family planning teacher then.

Observe leaders closely, learn as much as you can from their leadership styles.

Nanoparticles constitute a major class of nanomaterials. Nanoparticles are zero-dimensional, possessing nonmetric dimensions in all three dimensions.