U. Aswathanarayana

About U. Aswathanarayana

Uppugunduri Aswathanarayana (born 1928) is the Honorary Director of the Mahadevan International Centre for Water Resources Management, India. He is counted among the doyens of geology in independent India and is revered as a leading scientist from Andhra Pradesh. He studied / taught geology in Andhra University, India; California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California; Oxford University, United Kingdom, University of Western Ontario, Canada; University of Sagar, India; University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Universidade Eduardo Mondlane, Mozambique. He has served as the Dean and Director of Centre of Advanced Study in Geology, University of Sagar, India; Head of Department of Geology, University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania; Director, State Mining Corporation, Tanzania and Adviser on Environment and Technology, Mozambique. He also served as Consultant to UNDP, World Bank, Louis Berger Inc., and SIDA, while in Mozambique.

Education

Aswathanarayana had a difficult childhood because of poverty. He was a student of the Municipal High School, Ongole, Andhra Pradesh, India. He nearly missed the mathematics examination in the Secondary School Leaving Certificate of the then Madras Presidency when he reached the examination hall 30 minutes late, as he had to walk barefoot in the hot sun to reach the examination hall which was far away. He actually scored 100% marks in mathematics and set up a record for aggregate marks in the examination. Despite his meritorious performance in the high school, he almost gave up the idea of going to college because his parents could not afford it. Ultimately his mother had to sell whatever jewels she had to send him to college and then to university after a gap of time.

It was the vision of his mentor, Prof. C. Mahadevan of Andhra University, that launched him on his doctoral studies in what later came to be known as nuclear geology. Geology in those days was just hammer and hand lens affair. He did doctoral research in radioactivity studies using the equipment that he built himself with the help of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai. It was the first doctoral thesis on nuclear geology in India, and was examined by Arthur Holmes, F.R.S. of UK, J. Tuzo Wilson, F.R.S., of Canada, and Louis Ahrens then at Oxford. Later he did post-doctoral work on lead isotopes with Clair Patterson in Caltech in 1957, and Rb - Sr and K - Ar dating with S. Moorbath in Oxford, England, in 1963.

Career

In the course of a career of teaching, research and institutional capacity building spanning more than half a century, Aswathanarayana has been associated with Andhra University, Visakhapatnam, India, which was his alma mater; California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California, USA; Oxford University, Oxford, England; University of Western Ontario, London, Canada; University of Saugar, Sagar, Madhya Pradesh, India; University of Dar es Salaam, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Universidade Eduardo Mondlane, Maputo, Mozambique. He has served as the Dean and Director of Centre of Advanced Study in Geology, University of Sagar; Head of Department of Geology, University of Dar es Salaam; Director, State Mining Corporation, Tanzania and Adviser on Environment and Technology, Mozambique. He also served as Consultant to UNDP, World Bank, Louis Berger Inc., and SIDA, while in Mozambique. He was a UGC National Fellow, India (1976–79); UGC National Lecturer, India and UNIDO Consultant on Non-Metallic Minerals, Vienna (1988).