Early Years and Education
He was born on April 18, 1910, the second of the five children of Paul Varanasi Adiseshiah and Grace Nesamma Adiseshiah. His father was professor of philosophy and the first Indian principal of Voorhees College, Vellore, Tamil Nadu State, India. His mother, a talented musician, had studied up to the Senior Cambridge (High School) and was the first woman Councilor of the Vellore Municipality. She taught all her children till they were ten years of age. All of them were highly accomplished, and four of her children obtained doctorates: William, the eldest, in philosophy at Cambridge; Malcolm in economics at the London School of Economics, Padmini in education and Noble in medicine.
Adiseshiah studied in Voorhees High School, where he obtained two double promotions. He completed his secondary school education at the age of thirteen to join Voorhees College for his ‘intermediate’ course (equivalent to +2 course now.) Then he shifted to Loyola College, Chennai for his BA (Honours), where Ramaswamy Venkataraman, the former President of India, was his classmate. After a six-year teaching interregnum at the St. Paul's Cathedral Mission College in Calcutta (now Kolkata), he proceeded to King's College, Cambridge for his MA (Banking) and then to the London School of Economics (1937–40) for pursuing his doctoral research with specialization in currency. Late Dr. R. N. Poduval, who served in FAO and then was Chairman of Centre for Research in Economic and Social Development, Chennai was two years his junior in LSE.
In later life, after his retirement from UNESCO, Adiseshiah has fondly recalled his training and research;
| “ | under the wise guidance of Father Basneck and Professor P.J. Thomas in Madras, Benoy Kumar and Nalini Ranjan Sarkar in Calcutta, Percy Barrat Whale and John Maynard Keynes in London and Cambridge1. | ” |
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