Prof. S Ananthakrishnan

In this talk, the speaker wants to present why we consider Acharya J.C.Bose, who was decidedly a genius, as the Father of Radio Science and how his researches have impacted fields as varied as micro and mm wave science and technology, biomedical applications, physiology of plants, etc. 

Biography:

An internationally and nationally known radio astronomer and radio scientist, Subramaniam
Ananthakrishnan had a brilliant academic career and got his BSc(Hons), BTech and MTech
(1966) degrees from Calcutta University and later his PhD(Radio Astronomy-Physics) degree
from the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) and University of Bombay (Mumbai),
India in 1976.
He was a JCBose National Science Talent scholar during 1961-’66 and an academic member of
TIFR, Mumbai, since 1966 and was deeply involved in the construction, commissioning and
operation of two major radio astronomy facilities, known as the Ooty Radio Telescope in 1970
and the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) in 1999. He was the Project Scientist and
Head of Electronics and Control Systems of GMRT during 1989-2000 and commissioned GMRT
in 2001 and was its Observatory Director till 2004 and retired from TIFR as a Senior Professor in
2007. Since then, he is an Adjunct Professor in the Electronic Science department of Pune
University (now called Savitribai Phule Pune University). He was a DAE-BRNS Raja Ramanna
Fellow during 2007-2012 and held an INSA Senior Scientist fellowship from 2013-16. He is an
INSA Honorary Scientist from January 2017. He teaches the MSc students of the Electronic
Science dept., Antennas, Electromagnetics and Communication systems. Because of his
extensive engineering and scientific expertise, he got involved as a reviewer, Chairman and
member of many major astronomy projects, such as UVIT of ASTROSAT, ASTROSAT itself,
DOT 3.6 m optical telescope, ST Radar project, 21 m MACE Gamma-ray telescope and the
National Large Solar Telescope and Gauribidanur radio array. The ASTROSAT telescope was
launched by ISRO in September 2015. He is also the Chairman of the ISRO-Pune University
Project Evaluation Committee for the past 7 years.
An elected Fellow of all the major national science academies of India, Prof. Ananthakrishnan
was given the prestigious INSA International Vainu Bappu Memorial Award 2010 for his 
"Outstanding contributions in setting up the large Ooty Radio Telescope and the Giant
Metrewave Radio Telescope and in making extensive observations of radio sources using the
telescopes".
Prof. Ananthakrishnan was the elected Vice-President of the International Radio Science Union
(URSI) during 2011-2017, after having been the Chairman of one its commissions (J) during
2008-2011. He was a member of the First Court of Kashmir Central University. He is a jury
member of the INSA-INSPIRE faculty award programme in Physical Sciences for the past 6
years. He was elected as a Fellow of URSI in 2017. He is credited with the authorship of ~ 130+
papers in national and international publications with high citations.