Chintamani Nagesa Ramachandra Rao Quotes

There are some CNR clones. Prof D D Sharma in chemistry, Prof Ajay Sood in Physics are doing good work. Let’s see many more may come from the younger lot.

Always gain fresh insights, don't hesitate to ask the right questions.

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

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.

We couldn’t afford many things, but we had education. My father was a headmaster and later became an education officer. My mother was fantastic: she always told me, ‘Do what you want.’ She gave me total freedom, in fact both my parents did. But I really owe it to my mother. When I said I will go to Banaras (Varanasi) to study, she said, ‘You want to go to Banaras? Ok, go.’ She would say, ‘Don’t worry about money, reading is most important, read and then everything will come.’ My family was very open. Thanks to them I’m what I am today. I am the only child of my parents, so is my wife.

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

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.

My hero is Nobel Laureate Neville Mott who published four papers at the age of 92 when he died.

My monograph on ultraviolet and visible spectroscopy|visible spectroscopy using molecular orbital notations eventually resulted into a book in 1960.

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.

Among scientists, I am the second to get it [Bharat Ratna], after C.V.Raman. M. Visveswariah was an engineer, not a scientist. In that sense I am the second scientist to get it. I am happy that Kannadigas are also getting the award. My parents would always tell me to learn Kannada well in my younger days so I could be good both in Kannada and English. Learn to read and write Kannada, then you can learn English and enjoy both languages. [He was mistaken on the number of scientists with Bharat Ratna. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, a physicist, was bestowed the honour in 1997, making Rao the third recipient among scientists.]

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

You give attention to army, police and things like that. Who pays attention to science? When I got the Dan David prize, which is similar to Nobel and given once in a few years by Israel, nobody talked about it. Nobody asked me anything about it. Nobody even knows and nobody understands it. It is so prestigious in the world of science but why didn’t anyone write about it?

I am also working on materials never worked on in the world, completely new type of materials on the planet. I am worried not so much for myself, I will go on working. But I am worried for others.

Prof Brown used to say, if it is worth doing, it must be worth publishing. Faraday had said much the same many years earlier. In science, we “ work, finish and publish”. These statements have guided me all through my professional life.