Anil Kumar Bhatnagar earned his B.Sc and MSc degrees from Panjab University and University of Allahabad, respectively, after which he joined Physical Research Laboratory (PRL), Ahmedabad, to work under Dr. Vikram Sarabahi. He left PRL to join the Department of Physics, University of Maryland where he obtained PhD degree (1968) in Experimental Solid State Physics. Subsequently he worked as Research Associate in the Department of Physics, State University of New York, Stonybrook; As Assistant Professor and Associate Professor at St John's University, New York; and Associate Professor at Fordham University, New York. He joined the University of Hyderabad (1977) as a Professor of Physics. He was the Dean of School of Physics, Acting Vice-Chancellor, University of Hyderabad, Acting Vice-Chancellor, Central Institute of English and Foreign Languages (Hyderabad) and Vice-Chancellor of Pondicherry University (2003-2007). He has been a Visiting Professor at Texas A&M University (USA), at the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, at CENG, Grenoble, France, A DAAD Fellow at University of Neurenberg and a Visiting Senior Scientist at Department of Materials Science, University of Cambridge, Nagoya University and Tohuku University (Japan). He is presently S. Chadrasekhar Chair Professor at University of Hyderabad.

Academic and Research Achievements: Dr. Bhatnagar has taught various basic and advanced courses to undergraduate and graduate students at St. John's University, Fordham University, Texas A&M University and University of Hyderabad, and has supervised research at the MS, MPhil and Ph.D. levels. .At the University of Hyderabad he established a solid state research laboratory and worked on the physical properties of metallic, semiconducting and oxide glasses, semicondutors, superconductivity, magnetism and thin films. He has published more than 200 research papers and mentored over ten Ph.D. students.

Other Contributions: As one of the initial faculty members at the University of Hyderabad, Dr. Bhatnagar set up the experimental physics programme and was instrumental in starting the teaching programme in Electronics Science and Computational Techniques in Physics. He was a member of the SERC committee of DST and is the Theme Coordinator, Physics & Materials Science, Indo-Trento (Italy) Programme (ITPAR). He has been a member of several UGC, CSIR, DRDO, INSA and NASI (Allahabad) and DST committees.

Awards and Honours: Professor Bhatnagar is a Fellow of Indian Cryogenic Council; National Academy of Sciences (India) Allahabad and Institute of Physics.