Sarukkai Krishnamachary Rangarajan completed his BA (Hons) (Maths) (1953) from the University of Madras. He was Professor, Indian Institute of Science (IISc); Director, Central Electrochemical Research Institute (CECRI), Karaikudi; Professor, Department of Inorganic and Physical Chemistry, IISc, Bangalore; Visiting Professor, Washington DC and Georgetown University, USA; Homi Bhabha Fellow (1970-72); Senior Research Associate (1964-65) and Science Research Council Senior Visiting Professor (1977), University of New Castle-upon-Tyne, UK.

Academic and Research Achievements: Rangarajan’s contributions pertain to a unified theory of phenomenological coupling at the interfaces, including nucleation and growth kinetics, a new theory of fluctuations and stochastic modeling of interfacial phenomena, discovery of novel relaxation techniques charge-separation (electrical double layer) and adsorption, based on new statistical mechanical models of interfaces and quantum mechanical descriptions of chemisorption and electron transfer across charged interfaces. He was considered to be one of the foremost theoretical electrochemists in the world.

Awards and Honours:Professor Rangarajan was elected Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore and Academy of Sciences for the Developing World (1979).