Ramavarapu Venu Gopala Rao received his PhD degree under the supervision of WF Giauque at UC Berkeley and was post-doctoral Fellow at Penn State University and at the University of Glasgow. He was a Professor, Department of Chemistry at Jadavpur University, Kolkata for more than two decades. Gopala Rao was an INSA Senior Scientist during1993-97.

Academic and Research Achievements: Rao has worked in several fields of chemistry and physics such as thermodynamic studies at liquid hydrogen temperature, magnetic studies at liquid hydrogen and liquid helium temperatures at Penn State University and high frequency acoustic studies on condensed matter. He has worked on amorphous solids, fullarines, several amorphous semiconductors, semiconducting liquids and extensively worked on various aspects of statistical mechanics, quantum mechanics as well as several aspects of alloys and liquids. He formulated several equations which go in his name such as Rao-Keer’s constant which is connected with intermolecular force constants. He evolved a method for computation of structure factors of liquids using square-well potential as a perturbation on hard spheres and also new methods for calculation of heats of vaporization of fused salts. He has worked extensively on second and third order elastic constants both in liquids and amorphous solids, on polymers and polymer solutions on alkali halides, their structure factors and radial distribution functions turbidity, etc. He has published 300 papers in Journal of Pure & Applied Physics and produced more than 30 PhDs.

Awards and Honours: Dr Rao is a Fellow of Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore (1977). He received FICCI Award (1988) in Physical Sciences.