Erode Subramanian Raja Gopal (12 May 1936 – 15 November 2018) was an Indian condensed matter physicist, a former professor at the Indian Institute of Science and a former director of the National Physical Laboratory of India. Known for his research in condensed matter physics, Raja Gopal was an elected fellow of all the three major Indian science academies – the Indian National Science Academy, the National Academy of Sciences, India, and the Indian Academy of Sciences – as well as a member of the Institute of Physics. He was a former CSIR emeritus scientist, an alumnus of the University of Oxford and the author of three reference texts in condensed matter physics. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, one of the highest Indian science awards, for his contributions to Physical Sciences in 1978.
Biography
Born on 12 May 1936 at Salem, Tamil Nadu, E. S. Raja Gopal did his pre-graduate studies at St. Joseph's College, Tiruchirappalli and after earning a BSc (hons) from the University of Madras, he continued at the university to complete an MA in physics in 1956 and a second master's degree by research (MSc) in 1958. Subsequently, he moved to the neighboring state of Karnataka to pursue his doctoral studies at the Indian Institute of Science and secured a PhD in 1961 under the guidance of distinguished experimental physicist R. S. Krishnan. He then undertook post-doctoral studies at the Clarendon Laboratory of the Department of Physics, University of Oxford under Kurt Mendelssohn. Upon his return to India in 1964, he joined Indian Institute of Science (IISc) as a CSIR pool officer at the department of physics, to commence an association which would last over 35 years. He held several positions at IISc during this period, where he became an assistant professor in 1965, a full professor in 1969 and the dean of the faculty of science in 1976. He chaired the department of physics during 1977–80 and Regional Sophisticated Instrumentation Centre (present-day NMR Research Centre) from 1983 to 1989.
In 1991, Raja Gopal was appointed the director of National Physical Laboratory of India (NPL) but he continued his association with IISc as the MSIL chair professor from 1991 to 1994. He headed NPL till his retirement from official service in 1997 after which he remained with the laboratory as a CSIR emeritus scientist for a while before returning to Bengaluru to rejoin IISc holding the CSIR position and became an emeritus professor of the department of physics, a position he held until his death. At IISc, he held the position of a senior scientist of the Indian National Science Academy from 2001 to 2006 and was an honorary scientist of INSA since then.
Raja Gopal, who was a resident of Malleswaram in Bengaluru, died on 15 November 2018.
Legacy
Raja Gopal has worked on various aspects of condensed matter physics especially critical point phenomena which assisted in understanding the Law of the Rectilinear Diameter and its breakdown. He studied electrical resistivity in relation to non-equilibrium critical point phenomena and elucidated its unusual behavior. His studies of the liquid systems and disordered materials with regard to their phase transitions returned precision measurements which helped in observing particle-hole asymmetry in the liquid-gas critical phenomena in binary liquid mixtures for the first time. Percolation threshold in covalently bonded chalcogenide glasses through precise measurements was another of his notable findings. He has published his research findings by way of over 250 articles of which 167 have been listed in the article repository of the Indian Academy of Sciences. He has also written three books: High Temperature Superconductors, Specific Heats at Low Temperatures, and Statistical Mechanics and Properties of Matter: Theory and Applications and has supervised the studies of over 60 master's and doctoral scholars.