Roddam Narasimha

Roddam Narasimha (born 20 July 1933) is an Indian aerospace scientist and fluid dynamicist He was a Professor of Aerospace Engineering at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Director of National Aerospace Laboratories (NAL) and the Chairman of Engineering Mechanics Unit at Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR), Bangalore, India He is now an Honorary Professor at JNCASR and concurrently holds the Pratt & Whitney Chair in Science and Engineering at the University of Hyderabad Narasimha has been awarded the Padma Vibushan, Indias second highest civilian award, in 2013
He obtained his BE from Mysore University in 1953 and his ME from Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore in 1955 He worked with Satish Dhawan during his time at IISc He then worked with Hans Liepmann at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), United States to obtain his PhD degree in 1961 (PhD thesis) He joined the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in 1962 and was associated with the Department of Aerospace Engineering in various capacities from that date till 1999 In 1982, he founded the Centre for Atmospheric Sciences (now Centre for Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences), which he headed till 1989 He was the Director of the NAL from 1984 till 1993 For many years he held a visiting position at Caltech as the Clark B Millikan Professor and Sherman Fairchild distinguished scholar Between 1989 and 1990 he was the Jawaharlal Nehru professor of Engineering at Cambridge University in England He had also held visiting positions at NASA Langley, University of Strathclyde, University of Brussels, and Adelaide University From 1990 to 1994 he was INSA Golden Jubilee Research Professor, and from 1994 to 1999 the ISRO K R Ramanathan distinguished Professor at IISc and JNCASR He was the Director of the NIAS during 19972004 Narasimhas research has been chiefly concerned with Aerospace Fluid Dynamics and certain related problems in the atmosphere He has made extensive studies of transitions between laminar and turbulent flow (going in either direction), the structure of shock waves, various characteristics of fully developed turbulent flow (eg their memory, the bursting phenomenon in boundary layers), the fluid dynamics of clouds, nearsurface temperature distributions and eddy fluxes in atmospheric boundary layers He has been closely associated with Aerospace technology development in India at both technical and policymaking levels During 197779, he was the Chief Project Coordinator at Hindustan Aeronautics Limited