- Date Of Death: April 12, 2020
- State: Indiana
Ramachandra Rao Dasari age 87, passed away peacefully on April 12, 2020.
Ramachandra was born in a small village in Andhra Pradesh, India, into a farming family. He was the first one in the family to be formally educated. With encouragement of his maternal Grandfather who was able to read and write he persevered through poverty with hard work to continue on his quest for higher education.
After completing under graduation from Andhra University he went to Banaras Hindu University for his Masters in Physics. He completed his PhD program from Aligarh Muslim University in 1960. He joined then nascent IIT Kanpur as a faculty member in the department of Physics in 1960-61.
He took an opportunity to come to MIT in the US (1966-68) for 2 years at which time he worked in the lab that invented the first solid state Lasers and Laser spectroscopy. He returned to IITK and established the first Laser lab in India, fabricating the lasers indigenously.
He returned to Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1978 initially as a visiting Professor but then went on to stay at this institution for the next 40 years. Though he had taken retirement from being the Associate director of the MIT laser biomedical research center in 2007 at age of 75, he still continued his work on a part time basis.
In 2008 he moved to Northwest Indiana to be close his family and grandchildren. His work still continued with frequent visits to MIT until 2017. His pride and joy were his students both at IITK and at MIT, their success will remain his lasting legacy.
He leaves behind an endowment for annual lecture series in his name at both MIT and IITK to foster latest scientific research amongst the faculty and students.
He is survived by his wife Suhasini, having completed 69 years of marriage, his son Satish Dasari MD and daughter in law Veda Praveena, daughter Lakshmi Dasari, and grandchildren Sidarth and Vivek.
