Source on C. N. Ramachandra Rao

“We couldn’t afford many things, but we had education. My father was a headmaster and later became an education officer. My mother was fantastic: she always told me, ‘Do what you want.’ She gave me total freedom, in fact both my parents did. But I really owe it to my mother. When I said I will go to Banaras (Varanasi) to study, she said, ‘You want to go to Banaras? Ok, go.’ She would say, ‘Don’t worry about money, reading is most important, read and then everything will come.’ My family was very open. Thanks to them I’m what I am today. I am the only child of my parents, so is my wife.”

“Those days, poor teachers and poor policemen alone would have maximum children. But my father believed in a sort of family planning. He was known as family planning teacher then.”

“I am also working on materials never worked on in the world, completely new type of materials on the planet. I am worried not so much for myself, I will go on working. But I am worried for others.”

“Among scientists, I am the second to get it [Bharat Ratna], after C.V.Raman. M. Visveswariah was an engineer, not a scientist. In that sense I am the second scientist to get it. I am happy that Kannadigas are also getting the award. My parents would always tell me to learn Kannada well in my younger days so I could be good both in Kannada and English. Learn to read and write Kannada, then you can learn English and enjoy both languages. [He was mistaken on the number of scientists with Bharat Ratna. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, a physicist, was bestowed the honour in 1997, making Rao the third recipient among scientists.]”

“There are some CNR clones. Prof D D Sharma in chemistry, Prof Ajay Sood in Physics are doing good work. Let’s see many more may come from the younger lot.”

“You give attention to army, police and things like that. Who pays attention to science? When I got the Dan David prize, which is similar to Nobel and given once in a few years by Israel, nobody talked about it. Nobody asked me anything about it. Nobody even knows and nobody understands it. It is so prestigious in the world of science but why didn’t anyone write about it?”