OBITUARY

Professor AVS Prabhakara Rao
(April 4, 1930 - March 9, 2014)
Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur

Professor AVS Prabhakara Rao was born on April 4, 1930. He did his B.Sc. (Hons.) and M.Sc. from Andhra University and Ph.D. from Bombay University (based on his work carried out at Indian Institute of Science).

Professor Prabhakara Rao joined IIT Kanpur on July 25, 1966 as Assistant Professor in Civil Engineering and started, along with Professors GD Agarwal and RH Siddiqui, the Environmental Engineering specialization in the same year. He became Professor in 1971 and served as Head of Department from January, 1986 to February, 1988. He settled at Hyderabad in 1990, after retirement from the Institute.

Professor Prabhakar Rao served as Visiting Professor/Scientist at JNTU, Hyderabad till the age of 80 years. He guided several Master’s theses there and was part of the ‘Cloud Seeding’ project undertaken there.

At Hyderabad, Professor Prabhakara Rao had been staying with his son. He had been ailing for some time. He breathed his last in the early hours of March 9, 2014.

Professor Prabhakara Rao was a teacher with vision of tomorrow and was popularly known as "Teacher of Tomorrow". He had great passion for Environmental Engineering. He also motivated several students for the cause of environment and life sciences. He was the first person to start a course on Life Sciences, as soft core for all B.Tech. students in 1970's. He was a huge capacity builder in terms of technical, cultural, social and spiritual upliftment for the overall development of students. He was part of cultural activities from his student days, and even at the Institute, he remained active in such activities. He was a disciple of Swami Chinmayananda and enriched campus life by starting Bala Vihar. He was involved in all the schools activities in the Institute.

Professor Prabhakara Rao is survived by his son Professor Angara Raja, daughter-in-law Jyotsna and two grand daughters.

The Institute expresses its deepest condolences to the family of Professor Prabhakara Rao on his sad and sudden demise.

Read others message for the grieved family