April 19, 2005

Visiting UCSB Professor From India Shares $1 Million Dan David Prize for Research

Gail Gallessich

C.N.R. Rao, distinguished visiting professor in the Materials Research Lab at the University of California, Santa Barbara, has received the Dan David Prize, an international award endowed by the Dan David Foundation headquartered at Tel Aviv University in Israel. The $1 million Dan David Prize, which Rao shares with Harvard University chemist George Whitesides and chemical engineer Robert Langer of MIT, is considered by many to be the Nobel Prize of Israel.

The Dan David Prize recognizes and encourages innovative and interdisciplinary research that cuts across traditional boundaries and paradigms. It aims to foster universal values of excellence, creativity, justice, democracy and progress and to promote the scientific, technological and humanistic achievements that advance and improve the world.

Rao also recently received the Indian Science Award, the nation's most important science prize, in his native India, where he is chair of the Scientific Advisory Council to the Prime Minister.

Rao has spent one month per year at UCSB's Materials Research Lab (MRL) for the last 10 years. He shared the Somiya Award of the International Union of Materials Research Societies with Tony Cheetham, former director of the MRL. He is also the chairman of the Advisory Board of UCSB's new International Center for Materials Research (ICMR).

According to Craig Hawker, the new director of UCSB's Materials Research Lab, Rao is a world renowned authority in the field of materials chemistry. His contributions to the field of solid state chemistry and materials science are remarkable for their diversity and their originality.

Rao is the Linus Pauling Research Professor and Honorary President of the Jawarharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, Bangalore, India. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of London, as well as the Indian Academy of Sciences, and the Indian National Science Academy. He is a Foreign Associate of the National Academy of Sciences and a Founding Fellow of the Third World Academy of Sciences. The prolific scientist has published over 1400 research papers and edited or written 35 books in a career spanning over 40 years.

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