Patcha Ramachandra Rao (21 March 1942 – 10 January 2010) was a metallurgist and administrator. He has the unique distinction of being the only vice-chancellor (2002–05) of the Banaras Hindu University (BHU) who was also a student (1963–68) and faculty (1964–92) at that institution. From 1992 to 2002, Rao was the director of the National Metallurgical Laboratory, Jamshedpur. After his tenure as vice-chancellor of B.H.U., in 2005, he took the reins of the Defence Institute of Advanced Technology (DIAT) as its first vice-chancellor. He was to serve DIAT until his superannuation in 2007. From 2007 till the end, Rao was a Raja Ramanna Fellow at the International Advanced Research Centre for Powder Metallurgy and New Materials, in Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh.
Early years Rao was born on 21 March 1942 to S. R. Narayanaswamy Naidu and Laxmi Bai at Kavutavaram in the Krishna District of Andhra Pradesh. His father Narayanaswamy Naidu, was a government servant and retired as Deputy Registrar of Co-operative Societies while his mother, Laxmi Bai was also educated and studied up to matriculation when very few women were going to school. From his mother's side, Rao is the nephew of Narla Venkateswara Rao, a Telugu language writer, journalist and politician from Andhra Pradesh, Narla Gowri Shankar Rao, an assistant accountant-general (retired) in the Central Government of India, and Narla Tata Rao, a doyen of the power sector in India and a former chairman of the Andhra Pradesh State Electricity Board. For the early part of his life, Rao's parents home-schooled him and admitted him to the seventh grade directly. He completed formal school at the early age of 13. Thereafter, he went on to study intermediate at the newly established Andhra Loyola College at Vijayawada and moved over to Osmania University, Hyderabad for higher education. At the young age of 19 years, in 1961, Rao graduated with a master's degree in physics from the Osmania University in Hyderabad India. Thereafter, in 1963, Rao graduated from the Indian Institute of Sciences, Bangalore, with a B.E. degree in metallurgy. During his second year at I.I.Sc Bangalore, Rao was supported by the Dorabji Tata Trust. His long association with the Banaras Hindu University (B.H.U) began soon afterwards, when his mentor T.R. Anantharaman encouraged him to enroll in the doctoral program at the Department of Metallurgical Engineering at B.H.U (now Indian Institute of Technology (BHU) Varanasi). Rao's pioneering doctoral dissertation in Rapid Solidification laid the foundation for the research in this area in India. He obtained his MSc in 1965 and PhD in 1968.
Research contributions Rao pioneered research activities in the area of rapid solidification, an area pertaining to the solidification of liquids at the rate of a million degrees per second, in India in the mid-1960s. Such a process leads to the formation of extensive solid solutions, metastable intermediate phases and metallic glasses. He was the first outside the United States of America to conduct research in this technologically important area. Rao discovered novel intermetallic phases and also the hitherto unexpected phases with 5-fold rotational symmetry. His interests then shifted to identifying the theoretical basis of the formation of such phases and he began to model their formation from a thermodynamic standpoint. Some of the expressions developed for the free energy of undercooled liquids are being used extensively by modellers. The techniques of rapid solidification which were once a matter of scientific curiosity have now been industrially exploited by the advanced countries in the form of novel metallic glass-based transformer core materials, fine grained high strength alloys, new hard magnetic materials etc. Many noteworthy contributions made by Rao, his students and erstwhile colleagues at the Banaras Hindu University have brought immense recognition to India as an important centre for rapid solidification studies. In the past decade, Rao's interests shifted to the synthesis of materials by following routes which are very similar to those practised by living organisms. This new area of investigation aptly called biomimetics has the potential of avoiding environmental pollution and energy expenditure. Most methods operate at room temperature and ambient pressure. Prof. Ramachandra Rao and his students and colleagues have successfully synthesised calcium carbonate, calcium hydroxy apatite and some metallic nanocrystals through this route. The calcium hydroxy apatite has the potential for prosthetic applications. Animal studies involving rabbits have been conducted at the Banaras Hindu University. One of Rao's students has commercialised the apatite powders for dental applications. Besides biomimetics he has also worked on ceramic materials and their production by self-propagating high temperature synthesis (SHS). Other routes for nanomaterial synthesis were also explored. Studies were also conducted on natural composite materials like bamboo and synthetic composites and steels. Since retirement Rao had been pursuing theoretical studies involving the specific heats of about eleven metals which undergo the hexagonal to body centred cubic phase transformation. He and his associates had discovered some systematics in the thermodynamic properties of these metals but a real solution to the problem has evaded them for over 25 years.
Association with national and international bodies Rao was a fellow of all four science and engineering academies of the country: Indian Academy of Sciences, Indian National Science Academy, National Academy of Sciences, India, and Indian National Academy of Engineering. He was also a fellow of The Academy of Sciences for the Developing World. He served in the council of Indian National Science Academy from 1996 to 1998 and was serving vice-president when he died. He was also a fellow of the Institution of Engineers. He played pivoted role in the societies associated with his profession. He had served as president of the Indian Institute of Metals and vice-president of the Materials Research Society of India.
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