Raghunath Mashelkar named to US panel on arts & sciences

Eminent scientist and former director general of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CISR), Raghunath Mashelkar, has been elected as a foreign member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in the recently-declared election results of 2011 class of members.

The academy is an independent policy research centre that conducts multi-disciplinary studies of complex and emerging problems. A former director of the National Chemical Laboratory, Pune, he is only the sixth Indian member of the prestigious academy, established in 1780 by founding members that include Benjamin Franklin and George Washington. Last year, Indian industrialist Ratan Tata was elected as a foreign member of the
academy.

It has more than 200 Nobel prize winners as its fellows. Legends of science and humanities — among them Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill and Nelson Mandela — were some of the foreign members of the academy.