Sivaramakrishna Chandrasekhar - Publications and Honors

Publications and Honors

The year 1977 also saw the publication of Chandrasekhar’s book on liquid crystals by the Cambridge University Press. The book is popular amongst workers in the field, and has been translated into Russian and Japanese. An enlarged second edition of the book was published in 1992. Chandrasekhar also organized several international conferences, including the one in 1973 on the occasion of the Silver Jubilee of the founding of the RRI. Many stalwarts in the field of liquid crystals like Glen H. Brown, George William Gray, Alfred Saupe and Pierre-Gilles de Gennes (who was to receive the Nobel Prize in 1991, partly for his work on liquid crystals) participated in this conference.

Some major conferences Chandrasekhar organized include the Ninth International Liquid Crystals Conference in 1982 and the Second Asia-Pacific Physics Conference in 1986. After retiring from RRI in 1990, Chandrasekhar started the Centre for Liquid Crystal Research in a building made available by BEL. Chandrasekhar’s scientific achievements brought him many honours. He was elected Fellow of all the three academies in India, of the Royal Society, of the Institute of Physics (London) and of the Third World Academy of Sciences. He was a member of several international and national committees on science and education. He was the founder president of the International Liquid Crystal Society for 1990–92, and was an editor of the journal Molecular Crystals and Liquid Crystals for 20 years. He was the recipient of the Bhatnagar Award (1972), Homi Bhabha (1987) and Meghnad Saha (1992) medals of the Indian National Science Academy, C.V. Raman Centenary Medal of the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science (1988), the Royal Medal of Royal Society (1994), Niels Bohr International Gold Medal of UNESCO (1998), and the Freedericksz Medal of the Russian Liquid Crystal Society (2000). He was also the recipient of the Karnataka Rajyotsava award (1986), Padma Bhushan Award (1998) and the entitlement Chevalier dans L’ order des Palmes Academique of the French Government (1999). Chandrasekhar was largely responsible for placing India on the international map in the field of liquid crystals. Chandrasekhar hailed from the most illustrious family of physicists in India.