V. S. Arunachalam

Arunachalam was born on 10 November 1935. He was an alumnus of Sharada Vilas College, Mysuru, and took a doctorate in materials science and engineering at the University of Wales in 1965.

Arunachalam worked as a scientist at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, the National Aeronautical Laboratory in Bangalore and the Defence Metallurgical Research Laboratory in Hyderabad.

From 1982 to 1992 he was Director General of the Defence Research and Development Organisation, Secretary of the Department of Defence Research and Development and Scientific Adviser to the Defence Minister. During his tenure the Light Combat Aircraft programme and the Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme were initiated. He succeeded Raja Ramanna and was succeeded by A. P. J. Abdul Kalam.

He later held academic appointments abroad, including as Distinguished Service Professor of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and as an honorary professor at the University of Warwick.

In 2005 he founded CSTEP in Bengaluru, a think tank whose stated aim is to enrich policymaking with approaches drawn from science and technology, and he remained its chairman. He died in California on 16 August 2023, aged 87.

Arunachalam received the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology in engineering science in 1980, the Padma Bhushan in 1985 and the Padma Vibhushan in 1990. He was the first Indian to be elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in the United Kingdom, and was a fellow of the Indian National Science Academy, the Indian Academy of Sciences and the Indian National Academy of Engineering. In 2015 he received the DRDO Lifetime Achievement Award.[2][3][4]