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In Celebration of the 75th Birthday of Professor C. N. R. Rao

2009; Wiley; Volume: 4; Issue: 6 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1002/asia.200900160

1861-4728

Srinivasan Natarajan,

Metal Extraction and Bioleaching

It is indeed a great pleasure to introduce this special issue of Chemistry – An Asian Journal in honor of the 75th birthday of Professor C. N. R. Rao. Professor Rao1 was born on June 30, 1934 in Bangalore, India. He received his Masters degree in Science from Banaras Hindu University in 1953, his PhD from Purdue University in 1958, and his DSc degree from Mysore University in 1960. He started his academic career at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, in 1959 and moved to head the Chemistry Department of the newly formed Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, in 1963. He returned to the IISc in 1976 to establish a new department dedicated to solid-state chemistry and then became the Director of the IISc in 1984, a position he held till 1994. He is a lifetime professor at IISc. He established a national institute for advanced scientific research (JNCASR), where he presently holds the National Research Professorship as well as the Linus Pauling Professorship. Professor C. N. R. Rao Professor Rao is the most outstanding chemist of India today. He also ranks as one of the most prominent chemists in the world. He has made immense contributions of great significance to several facets of chemistry, especially in solid-state and materials chemistry, in the last 50 years. He started his career as a structural chemist investigating molecules by electron diffraction, vibrational spectroscopy, electronic spectroscopy, and photoelectron spectroscopy. He also investigated hydrogen bonding, charge-transfer interactions, and related phenomena in a variety of systems by employing spectroscopy. He wrote many important papers and reviews on these subjects, besides well-known books on ultraviolet/visible spectroscopy and infrared spectroscopy. Professor Rao's contributions to transition-metal oxide systems cover a wide range of topics that include high-temperature superconductivity, colossal magnetoresistance, and metal–insulator transitions. His immense contributions helped in the understanding of important phenomena and relationships between materials properties and structural chemistry. His work on the compositionally controlled metal–insulator transitions is significant. The charge, spin, and orbital ordering in manganates and related materials, as well as the electronic phase separation in transition-metal oxides with strongly correlated electrons, is highly important. He has shown that the charge-ordered rare-earth manganates also exhibit magnetoelectric behavior. Professor Rao has demonstrated the formation of complex three-dimensional open-framework structures from a progressive building up from zero- or one-dimensional structures. He has also shown that a similar approach can be employed for the carboxylate-based system as well. His contribution towards the understanding of the Kagome lattice with novel magnetic properties is significant. He has also provided a simple and elegant classification for the family of metal–organic framework compounds. Professor Rao's contributions on the solid-state properties of nanomaterials are also highly significant. He has developed chemical precursor syntheses of carbon nanotubes to produce aligned nanotube bundles. The first synthesis and establishment of transistor-like properties in Y-junction carbon nanotubes as well as studies on inorganic nanotubes are noteworthy. Besides studies on nanowires and related materials, he has been working on two-dimensional materials, especially graphene. Professor Rao has made significant contributions towards size-dependent properties of metal nanocrystals such as metallicity, mesoscopic assembly, reactivity, and Coulomb blockade, etc. He has developed a simple yet very efficient method of preparing ultrathin nanocrystalline films of metals, chalcogenides, and oxides by using the liquid–liquid interface, which has opened up many new possibilities in materials chemistry. His long and illustrious career has led to about 1400 research papers and 42 books. Many honors and awards have been conferred on Professor Rao during the last 50 years of his dedication to science and research. He has been awarded honorary doctorate degrees from 46 universities from India and abroad, including his alma mater Purdue University as well as Uppsala and Oxford Universities. His standing and respect in the international scientific community are corroborated by a long list of awards and honors, a few of which are listed below: Marlow Medal of the Faraday Society (1967) Bhatnagar Prize of CSIR, India (1968) The Centennial Foreign Fellowship of the American Chemical Society (1976) The Royal Society of Chemistry (London) medal for Solid State Chemistry (1981) Padma Vibhushan, National honor bestowed by the President of India (1985) Blackett Lectureship, The Royal Society, London (1991) Albert Einstein Gold Medal, UNESCO (1996) Centenary Lectureship and Medal, Royal Society of Chemistry, London (2000) Hughes Medal for Physical Sciences, The Royal Society, London (2000) Somiya Award – IUMRS (2004) First India Science Award (2004) The Dan David Prize for Science in the Future Dimension in the field of Materials Science (2005) Chevalier de La Legion D'Honneur, France (2005) Honorary Fellowship, Institute of Physics, London (2006) Nikkei Asia prize for science, technology, and innovation, Japan (2008) Abdus Salam medal for Science and Technologies – TWAS (2009), etc. He is a fellow of all the major academies of the world including the Royal Society, London, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, and the Japan Academy and French Academy of Sciences. He is also a founding member of the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World. Professor Rao chose solid-state materials chemistry as his area for research five decades ago, and can be considered as a pioneer and probably the most accomplished solid-state and materials chemist today. It is truly creditable that he has accomplished so much work of high impact from India, by creating the necessary infrastructure and facilities. He has built many departments and institutions of great quality, has trained a large number of chemists and physicists, and has been intimately involved in the growth of modern solid-state and materials chemistry. Rao is one of the leaders in chemistry in the world today, and is the most noted and cited chemist from the Third World. The most important and characteristic point of Professor Rao is his ability to think out of the box to generate new ideas and concepts which are truly original. It has been a pleasure and a privilege to write this guest editorial to this volume dedicated to celebrate Professor Rao's 75th Birthday. 1 Srinivasan Natarajan Professor S. Natarajan Solid State and Structural Chemistry Unit Indian Institute of Science Bangalore 560 012 (India) Email: [email protected] C. N. R. Rao was one of the first—and the first in India—whom I approached with the idea of Chemistry – An Asian Journal, and he was immediately convinced, excited, and supportive. His long-standing relationship with Angewandte Chemie as an author and as a referee is also greatly appreciated. I first met him in Vienna at an International Spectroscopy Conference back in the late 1980s, and it has always been a pleasure to interact with him. A highlight in the short history of Chemistry – An Asian Journal was certainly the Asian Chemical Editorial Society (ACES) meeting in the “Rao institute”, the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR), in 2007. From the entire team at Chemistry – An Asian Journal, we wish Prof. Rao all the best for his 75th birthday and beyond, and we look forward to many years of continued collaboration. Peter Gölitz Editor1