Ind. Eng. Chem. Res. 2009, 48, 9357
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B. D. Kulkarni Festschrift: Editorial I am delighted that Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research is bringing out a special issue in honor of Dr. B. D. Kulkarni’s 60th birthday, and it is my pleasure to write an editorial for this issue (and another in honor of Professor J. B. Joshi’s 60th birthday, that is being released this year as well). This will also roughly coincide with the symposium in chemical engineering being organized as part of the Diamond Jubilee celebration of the National Chemical Laboratory (Pune, India) in the first week of June. Considering B. D.’s enormous role in shaping the course and quality of chemical engineering research (particularly in India), both of these events constitute a fitting tribute to an amazingly unassuming and productive chemical engineer. B. D. is not one of those individuals who attend a large number of symposia in all parts of the world despite personal invitations to lecture. His base is his lab, and his only medium of professional expression is his stream of publications covering a variety of areas in chemical reaction engineering and optimization in general. He has also been heavily involved in process development and technology transfer in India. For persons of his quiet disposition with a sincere disregard for self-promotion, performance has to be at a much higher level than for most others, in order to receive peer recognition of the type B. D. has received. That this has happened is a tribute at once to the quality of his work and the personal admiration of his peers that he so deservedly enjoys. The B. D. story is not the usual story of an intelligent young man with the kind of pedigree that rubs off the halls of prestigious academic institutions. He graduated from a less glamorous institute, which in several ways turned out to be a good happenstance for chemical engineering research in India. While he was still a student there, I was invited by the University Grants Commission in India to participate in a program to send lecturers to such places. Sitting unnoticed at the farthest rear of the lecture hall, B. D. mustered courage enough to ask a question, and that marked the beginning of a relationship I have been consistently proud of. Within a year, he came with his father to talk to me about the possibility of a position in my group. To cut a long story short, I found his appreciation of the basics of science so compelling that I had no hesitation in recommending his name (over many toppers from IITs) to the director for a research fellowship. Soon this physically diminutive, taciturn young man became a compelling presence in the Chemical Engineering and Process Development Division of the National Chemical Laboratory. He has never looked back since. With his joining the NCL as a Scientific Officer flowered a career singularly devoted to merit and merit alone for professional growth. B. D. had come to symbolize what to me was the essence and true ingredient of scholarship. He quickly shed the wrappings of conventional choices for his research and plunged into emerging areas with a gusto and devotion that have continued unabated to this day. Success has not changed his temperament. Quiet but unafraid of backlashes to his dignified candor, he projects a personality all his own, a fine mixture of the scholar, the teacher, and the ever-available colleague to offer solutions to difficult industrial problems. A few words about the breadth of his expertise will not be out of place here. Starting with conventional chemical reaction engineering in gas-liquid and gas-solid catalytic reactions, he quickly moved on to tackle difficult problems in reactor stability and, then, spent several years in an area chemical engineers have tended to avoid:
stochastic analysis of chemically reacting systems. B. D. has since been conducting extensive research in several interdisciplinary areas, including: new mechanisms for explaining unstable behavior of systems; analyzing systems with special emphasis on studying their bifurcation, stability, and topological properties; suggesting novel control and operating strategies for improving system performance; characterizing and controlling pattern formation in space-time systems exhibiting chaos and turbulence; and understanding the role of noise in altering complex dynamics and bringing out new and efficient ways to filter them. B. D.’s confidence in his own ability to tackle novel issues is so strong that he is not easily shaken or diverted by criticism. His overoccupation with his research sometimes leads to a lowering of priorities for other issues, but he never lets this adversely affect any issue. It is hard to peak without priorities, and he has used this dictum naturally to bring out the best in himself and his colleagues. In the ultimate analysis, while B.D. will be admired for many things, he will be remembered most of all for his scholarship and his unwavering commitment to excellence in research. Naturally reticent and ever prone to verbal economy, the term “I” is almost absent from his written or spoken repertoire of words while describing his work. This is a natural absence, not a contrived elimination. Fortunately, I am not bound by the kind of reticence that has circumscribed his own approach to thought and action. This editorial about him may not entirely meet with his approval, but the facts need to be told, if only to bring his silent strengths to the forefront. Given the number of brilliant papers that are appearing in this special issue, this editorial may turn out to be no more than an exercise in redundancy, but I do so only to add my own personal words of admiration. There is not an area B. D. has worked in that he has not embellished. With a razor sharp mind, he would lose no time in getting to the bottom of a problem and offering solutions fit for the purist and more than adequate for those who would want tomorrow’s solutions and profits today. Novelty and transport of knowledge from one unlikely sector of enquiry to another have been his forte and the very fabric of his intellectual matrix. Had he been more “pushy”, he would probably have added a few more letters and laurels to his already substantial list. But then, he would be less of a B. D. than he is, and NCL and the world of Indian chemical engineering would be all the poorer. Ending with one final point, B. D. is a completely homegrown product of India, with no Ph.D. or postdoctoral accreditations from American or European universities. He had neither the time nor the desire for those. Indian research soil was where he would sow his seeds. And, that is precisely what he did, with enthusiasm and poise. The reputation he enjoys in India and the remarkable degree of international acclaim he has received sit well and gracefully on him.
L. K. Doraiswamy Anson Marston Distinguished Professor in Engineering Emeritus, Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Iowa State UniVersity, Ames, Iowa
10.1021/ie900989b CCC: $40.75 2009 American Chemical Society Published on Web 07/30/2009
IE900989B
