My Life Bits

In this section I give bits and pieces of my life that are relevant to the main theme which is my research life. I will give some information on my childhood and youth, early and later education leading to advanced studies. I must tell you at the outset I was not born a prodigy with any sign that I would one day become a scientist or engineer or even a teacher. Since my parents were both teachers, at best I could be in line for the teaching profession. You will see that is exactly what happened. So becoming a scientist would have been unthinkable for me or for my parents. We did not know any scientists except heard of some famous one like Newton and Faraday and Pasteur. My home country, India, had produced a few world renowned scientists such as Raman, but they were well beyond my reach. So I must tell you how the course of my life took many turns and I finally became a scientist.

I was born on August 29, 1934 in India in the State of Kerala on the southwestern side. I have acquired an old 1934 calendar in mint condition which says Aug 29 was a Wednesday. So I am a mid-weeker! Ours was a large family of eight children, four boys and four girls (excluding three who had died early in life). I may be considered second or third in line depending on how you compute. I have a twin brother who is believed to be minutes older than I, and we have one elder sister. My twin status has a lot to do with who I am now, and that itself is a fascinating story. We are identical twins too.

My early life was probably not different from that of boys of my age. But there was a difference. My father was an elementary school principal, and my mother was a teacher in the same school where he taught. We were not only their children, but also their students. We did not have a privileged position because of that, and my parents were disciplinarians. They expected us to excel in the classes, and supervised our early education. My father was skilled in arithmetic, and he instilled in us a love of the subject. We could memorize long multiplication tables.

In Middle School, we continued to be good students, though no longer under my parents' direct supervision. Yet, at home they made sure we did our home work well.

The most memorable part of my early education is my High School education. I entered high school in 1947 and graduated in 1950. The home atmosphere was still strict, and my parents expected academic excellence. Since they were not financially rich (both worked for Church owned schools which could pay only a meager salary), we were different from our peers who had money to spend and time to party. So we focussed on our studies.

The most interesting subjects in high school were geography, science and math. In 1947 August India became independent, but before that the political agitation reached every part of the country, even our remote high school (near the hilly part of my home state, Kerala in the South). Student leaders would shout slogans and disrupt classes, and this became a daily occurrence for some time. Fortunately it did not affect our education. Geography was interesting for two reasons: my father had world maps in our house when most households had never owned one. During World War II he would follow the course of the War. When the war ended he would lead the students in procession in victory marches. Secondly, my geography teacher was very imaginative, and would describe far-off places as if he had visited them. Math, of course, was in our family, but became more and more challenging as Arithmetic gave way to Mathematics. Science was captivating with its experiments. My brother and I would sit in the front row and watch those experiments our Science teacher would conduct in front of us. Chemistry was fascinating as I watched sodium metal catch fire over water, and chlorine gas would be produced right in front of us (with its pungent smell). Our science teacher would be exasperated some times because we would ask endless questions.

Does that sound like one day I was going to become a scientist? May be. But at that time it was mere curiosity. In the final year of high school I won a competitive prize newly implemented: General Knowledge and Intelligence. But that did not point to my becoming a Scientist some day. I would say that I have a general knowledge of many fields, and have a good library of books on just about all subjects. My scientific interest certainly dominated my career, but has not consumed it. The subjects I had never cared for such as history (including ancient) and social sciences later on became part of my interest.

My brother and I were on top in the classes, particularly in science and math. I would say my brother was a notch ahead of me always. I was second, fitting my rank in birth order of the twins.

In those days high school graduates in the remote area where we were living at that time went for some business; some could become elementary and middle school teachers if they took a teaching diploma. That is what my elder sister did. When it came to our turn, my father had wished at least one of us would go to college which was far away, and was financially out of reach. Yet, out of his eagerness he sent application for my brother to a prestigious college which was in a town some seven miles from his own home town in a highly populated and educationally progressed area of our State.

The high school exam is a Statewide exam covering at least six subjects. This exam alone decided whether one would pass or fail. Failure in just one subject would be enough to prevent one's graduation, and next year all the subjects would have to be taken in the exam. The individual school teachers had no control over the questions which arrived in sealed envelopes. The best they could do was to coach students for all types of questions. This is where the better schools fared well. Ours was a mediocre or less than mediocre school.

To go to college high grades were required. If one had First Class, getting 60 percent of the total grade (equivalent to an A in USA), he or she would have no difficulty in getting admission. Our school never had a First Class student in all those years.

We thought that for the first time we could secure a First class. When the exam results were announced, we learned we had not secured First Class. Later on the High School Leaving Certificates arrived which gave detailed grades on each subject. We learned that both my brother and I had narrowly missed First Class, and we had the highest grade in our class. Our science and math grades were quite high, but our beloved geography had cheated us with a low score. Obviously our very entertaining geography teacher was not a good coach.

Then came the surprise. For the first time, I beat my brother in total marks (the grades were given on a 1 to 100 scale, and what you earned is the 'mark'). I fell short of 8 marks for First Class while my brother fell short of 12 marks. Destiny began to act in favor of me.

My father was in a predicament. What was he going to do? I didn't have an application made for college admission; he could never think of sending two boys to college even if admission could be secured. Admission was extremely competitive, and late application would almost always be rejected.

After my father consulted with our Pastor, he decided to take me along with my brother for the distant bus ride to the college. My brother already had an interview appointment. I had not even an application. At the college my father met the austere Principal who told him that it was too late for me. As he came out of his office somewhat sad, the Vice Principal was standing there. He got a fascination for the two boys who looked similar. Upon enquiry he learned of our predicament. Since we had almost First Class rank, he did not want to turn us away. He told me to go along with my brother before the Interview board, and he himself told the professors that we both were one! In no time both of us were admitted to the college which was the 'Harvard' of Kerala. It was a Jesuit college affiliated to the University of Travancore (later University of Kerala). Many of the faculty were in priestly robes including the Principal and the Vice Principal. The Principal alone wore dark brown robes. We belonged to the Anglican church, but felt no discrimination in the Catholic college. The Jesuits gave much importance to studies.

Though I did not know at that time, getting admission in that college certainly was a step to my becoming a scientist some day. During the four years of undergraduate study there we had to focus on our grades, and at the same time struggle for tuition. The Vice Principal secured University scholarship for both of us which helped to some extent. My father gave private tuition to raise extra money. We both commuted from my father's home town by bus every day, carrying our lunch box. Bus rides were trying experiences every day because there were not enough buses, and no queue system. After reaching home we had to spend all the time on our courses.

In a quarter or two, my brother and I who came from an obscure school rose to the top of the class of 400 students and began to be noticed. We were upstarts because we beat those who had come with First Class and high ranks. The Vice Principal who supported us was happy. He was like our great Uncle in-house in such a prestigious college. Years later he would get some repayment in a small way. Once he was traveling in a car through the town where my brother was teaching. His car was surrounded by some bandits. My brother came out and rescued him. He was very grateful.

Once in college, my brother got ahead of me a notch as in high school. After two years we had to choose our main subject. I chose Chemistry, and my brother chose Physics. Our secondary subjects were Physics and mathematics respectively. The twins were 'separated'.

At the end of the four years, the Statewide Undergraduate exam came. Our college produced the highest ranks in Physics and Chemistry of all the colleges. My brother was First Rank in Physics and was awarded the College Gold medal. I was third rank in Chemistry, the first and second were also from our college. However, I beat these two guys in a Proficiency Prize in Chemistry which they could not get because they each had once failed in language exams given in college exams. Needless to say we had First Class in our field. This would be important for any advanced studies later.

None of the high ranking students entered post graduate studies at that time because of financial burdens. All became school teachers, and that included my brother and I. We became high school science teachers. High school teachers, to my knowledge, never become scientists!

My brother and I spent eight or nine years in high school teaching following graduation. It appeared that we would eventually become School Principals and even Superintendents before we would retire.

Those school teaching years were very enjoyable because teaching science was fun. My students were inspired, but that's all, perhaps.

I had briefly tried for Industrial jobs before I tried teaching job, but nothing came up. One of my distant relatives held a prestigious position in Industry in another city, and he was the only one whom I know had a doctorate degree, especially in Chemistry. However he was no help in finding me a job. Years later I would have the same degrees he had and would do much more research. But that was to come much later, much later.

After several years of teaching, life began to take a surprise turn. My brother found out that some of his fellow teachers were trying to get to (post) graduate studies in Mathematics by home study. Since his main subject was Physics, he had no open road. So he decided to first get a full undergraduate degree in mathematics by home study. Eventually he not only passed the exam, but got high rank. That opened the way for him for post graduate studies ('graduate studies' as they call in USA), but again, home study was the only recourse. No way to quit the job because of loss of valuable income needed for the education of the youngsters. Surprisingly, he was able to complete half the post graduate studies, but his grades were not good. So he took leave and attended college for the final year. He not only made up for the poor performance in the first year, but came out with an over all First Class at the Masters level! He was immediately offered a Lecturer post in the same college. He resigned from his school job.

I was not watching idle. I realized that I had to attend two full years of post graduate study in Chemistry. The proper timing was when my brother graduated. So I applied for admission in the State-run University College some 80 miles away from my home. And it was one of the most prestigious places to study. I knew I was out of touch with the curriculum after nine long years, so how was I going to catch up and compete with those fresh from college? So what I did was to get familiar with the courses I would need to take. The most threatening subject was physical chemistry for which advanced mathematics was necessary. My math background was not good enough. So I studied at home B.S. level math subjects like Calculus. I did not have to pass any exams.

There was another situation I had to face. While all this was going on I got married. Immediately after that my brother completed his Masters and started work. I had to make up my mind fast, and I did. So 19 days after my marriage I left my job and home for my Masters. I could return home and see my wife only once in three months. Fortunately she was working as a teacher from her home which is not too far from my own home.

Masters level graduate study was challenging indeed. It was a non-thesis course which meant I had to do advanced level studies in all major branches of Chemistry. I found I could compete with the youngsters and came nearly to the top of the class. Just as in undergraduate Chemistry, there were one or two real smart ones I could never beat. At the end of the two years I faced the final exam (also State-wide) and secured First Class and high rank.

Other than the lab experiments I did, there was no real research. So the Masters did not really prepare me to become a scientist. Most of the graduates would end up teaching in a college. And that is what I did too. I resigned from my school job and became a college lecturer. There was no possibility for research for me. Very few ever went to doctoral programs. Spending several more years in studies would have been unthinkable for me. Before I finished studies, a daughter was born to us, so I was a really family man.

I just mentioned that I had resigned my years of school teaching and took up a college teaching job as a Lecturer in Chemistry (this title is after the British system). College teaching was very enjoyable and leisurely except for teaching undergraduate classes which were large and the students could be unruly. I was able to manage well by inspiring the students with interesting tidbits related to the subject. I was allowed to teach at the Masters level because professors with doctoral degree were rare. My First Class certainly was a factor in selecting me. I had selected this college away from my home, and had to stay with a relative, keeping my wife and daughter back home. So this was not going to be easy.

An opportunity arose for me to go overseas to Ghana as a Science teacher. Several of my friends who had Masters took advantage of the offer including my brother who left his college job the year I started mine. A year later I joined my brother for a teaching job in Ghana at the same college he was teaching. Think about the Twins teaching Physics and Chemistry in adjoining halls. Were the students and faculty confused? Perhaps. But it did not create any major problems.

While in Ghana many who came there decided to go to USA to do advanced studies, particularly doctorate program. It was possible to apply to several universities and inquire about stipends (without which it would not be easy to finance studies). Fortunately all of us got admission in one university or other. My brother had come to Ghana one year ahead of me, and he left for USA two years later. I followed him another year later, also after serving two years.

There was one catch for me. I had two little children, and I did not want to take them to America immediately. My wife had a job to go back to. So they had to leave for India while I left for USA in September of 1968. The next time I would see my family was in May of 1971. That was really hard on me. My wife and children had folks to take care of them. Many foreign students were in the same situation. My graduate school was the University of Washington in Seattle, and I got a teaching assistantship offer from there.

I spent two weeks in Europe stopping at several major cities, an adventure in itself, considering I had never gone on myself to other countries. Fortunately a travel book called 'Europe on $5 A Day' gave me precise information on where to stay, what to see and so on. My interest in geography was behind this adventure.

Once in the Ph.D. program, new challenges came. The first was the Entrance exams in different fields of Chemistry. While in Ghana I had made some reading for this. That was certainly helpful. I also reviewed my Masters courses which were very extensive. As expected, I did not do well in physical chemistry because it had quantum mechanics in it. So the only undergraduate course I had to take was in Physical chemistry. I straightaway signed up for graduate courses needed to get credit hours, and easily completed that with A grade for all except one course (guess which one?) for which I got a B.

Another challenge was to learn two European languages such as French and German used for scientific readings. This itself can slow one down from graduating. I had taken a one month French lesson from a French teacher in Ghana, very elementary stuff. I did not want to take formal classes during my graduate work, so I bought a book and read it myself. Fortunately I passed the Princeton University administered test. Then I found out that if I did an advanced test in French and passed it, I would not need to study German. And that is what I did. All I needed was to be able to read scientific journals with ability to translate it to English. My professor supervised it, and I passed it.

Besides the research itself, the most formidable challenge was to pass the final qualifying exams called Cumulative Exams. There was no curriculum for it. Each Ph.D. student could take the tests as many as 18 times and pass at least six. The truth is, most graduate students would barely make it. If they didn't pass they could just get a Masters and quit.

I wanted to try my luck in passing the tests, and entered it the first year itself. I got a taste of the questions, and I failed as most others. But there were plenty of chances left. However, I did not want to go on taking the tests for the next several years. Guess what? I passed the next four tests as no one else did. It was my tough Masters level courses back home that helped me answer some of those unexpected questions! My good fortune and a lot of Providence! I passed four out of the first six tests in the first year, and there was a provision that excused me from further tests.

The final challenge was the research program. This can be the most difficult challenge. If one chooses the wrong project or the wrong advisor, it could mean many years of meaningless research and no graduation. A lot of graduate students were going through that scenario.

How was I going to find an Advisor? I interviewed nine professors. One question you have to ask them is if they have funds. This was a frustrating task. Finally I leaned towards a professor in geochemistry. Then another miracle happened. There was this one Professor whom nobody wanted to interview, and I had avoided him. Then I got a note in my mail box from one of this Professor's post doctoral fellow. It said that I could go and talk to him about my research interests. I convinced myself this was a good sign and went to him. He took me to the Professor who very kindly received me and showed around his labs. I was impressed. I also learned he had the largest amount of funding, and I could get research grants without the need of doing teaching assistantships, a big time saver. I accepted his offer and he was very happy. He was from Switzerland, a Spectroscopist and world famous sulfur chemist. He had done research at University of California in Berkeley. The other professors did not like him well for whatever reason.

Still, choosing a research project was a challenge. My Advisor's other graduate students were all getting ready to choose their projects. We all decided to do some exploratory research. I chose elemental sulfur which my Advisor had researched in Berkeley. There was some mystery about the different forms of sulfur appearing in different colors and forms. Every high school student knows that hot sulfur becomes viscous and at the same time turns red from the original yellow color. There was no good explanation for the color change. I agreed to do my exploration on this mystery, though I had no Idea what my ultimate research project would be.

We had excellent glass blowers in the department. I needed transparent thin cells made of quartz to fill liquid sulfur, and I used those cells for a lot of experiments. First I would pour sulfur powder and then melt it to an yellow liquid. The cell would be placed in a heater block with openings on both sides and would be placed in the optical path of a spectrophotometer which emits a steady beam of light of different wavelengths. I had expected that as the light passes through the thin film of liquid sulfur, it would absorb some of the energy of the beam at certain wavelengths and a graphical plot would be generated showing peaks where absorption takes place. Instead, I got only the tail end of the peak because the absorbence was so high. By varying the temperature I could see the sulfur getting darker and darker red, and the 'tail' moving farther and farther. The shift rate was not uniform; in fact it showed an abnormal rise at about 160oC, and this was the temperature at which the sulfur suddenly became viscous and became red. So there was the suspicion that a new species of sulfur was being generated at this temperature, a conclusion that would be confirmed much later and would be part of my Ph. D. Thesis. I decided to continue this research as my main research. Studying liquid sulfur to identify the new species was not going to work out. I had to resort to other techniques.

My professor had worked on sulfur vapor and its light absorbence. He had identified a light bluish sulfur species called S2 which is a fragment containing two sulfur atoms. Yellow sulfur is a cyclic entity with eight sulfur atoms. This breaks open at high temperature creating fragments. Later on these fragments would join end to end forming the long viscous chain I had mentioned earlier. Sulfur vapor itself is reddish, and it stands to reason that the reddish liquid and the reddish vapor have common species. Other studies had shown that there were several sulfur fragments in sulfur vapor, so which one was responsible for the red color? This was the puzzle I wanted to solve.

I decided to experiment with sulfur vapor using the same spectro-photometer. I had a quartz cell made with provision to heat up yellow sulfur in a side tube and study the light absorption of the vapor in the straight part of the cell. I changed the temperature from low to high. One day, when my professor was in Germany, I got a strange result. I was getting an absorption peak in what we call at the border of ultraviolet and visible range; furthermore, this peak had a multitude of smaller peaks. Such a structure is indicative of a well defined small molecule. If I were to guess the color of this species, it would be orange (the observed color is the complementary of the color absorbed). But what was the species? It was in the region close to the S2 species mentioned above, and naturally I would guess an S3 fragment. The only other peak I got was farther towards the red wavelength, and had no such fine structure. My guess was it was an S4 species, and its color would be purple (since it absorbed in the green region). Purple sulfur has been reported in the literature, but is unstable.

There was no specific peak to be ascribed to red species. But I noticed that if I mix orange and purple vapor species together, it would look red! So the mystery of the red color was solved.

My professor was satisfied that I had made a significant discovery and had solved and age-old scientific problem. In order to complete my thesis I had to do some other research too. My Thesis was written in just two months, 200 page document with 200 references, and would impress anyone. I was allowed to submit my thesis only a year and nine months since my admission for which I secured special waivers. My thesis defense went well, though one senior professor was not happy that I was getting out so soon when his own students were spending years. I actually broke the University record in getting my Ph.D. in such a short time. I was able to attend the Commencement exercises which took place in less than three weeks. I had to take a chance by signing up for it before my thesis defense.

A picture collage of the educational institutions I have attended is given at the end.

Two other graduate students in our group continued with sulfur research, and I stayed as a post doctoral fellow there to work with them. During this period we isolated the mysterious orange S3 species and the purple S4 species using very advanced isolation techniques. The technique we used was 'splitting' molecules of S3Cl2 and S4Cl2 (chlorosulfanes) whose chemical structures are Cl-S-S-S-Cl and Cl-S-S-S-S-Cl where Cl stands for chlorine atom. These substances were deposited as vapor at liquid helium temperature(about 270oC below zero) mixed with inert gas on a cold target. Using xenon arc lamp the deposit was struck with powerful UV light which caused the S-CL bonds alone to split, so we got only the S3 and the S4 species on the target, and they were orange and purple colored! We took the spectra of it and matched with the spectra of the peaks in sulfur vapor described earlier. These colorful species could not be preserved because on warming up they would become yellow sulfur just as sulfur vapor when cooled down also becomes yellow sulfur. We published several technical papers, and the next edition of the Inorganic Chemistry text book in colleges revised the section on sulfur to include our new findings. The Sulfur Chemistry Journal had a cover picture of colored sulfur species; an American Chemical Society monograph on sulfur published a chapter covering all the research we had done on sulfur including a quantum mechanical analysis of the S3 peaks. So the sulfur research which at first looked hopeless ended in total victory.

I could boast, if I wanted, that finally I had become a successful researcher. Some of the lessons I learned are (i) never give up easily, (ii) if something puzzling happens, pursue it. After I had come to an apparent dead end with liquid sulfur, I read a published paper on it; the author had done similar work and had come to a dead end. If I had read that before my research, I would never have taken up sulfur research, and the mystery would have remained unsolved to this day. So at times Ignorance is Bliss. At the same time, ignorance is folly when you realize that whatever you had discovered had been discovered before. I had to make a thorough literature search to make sure none of my discoveries had been made earlier. The truth is that the interesting set of S3 peaks I had observed had been photographed (using another device) years earlier by a German researcher who had measured the position of each peak carefully. My professor came to know about it after my discovery of the peak structure. Since it was not public knowledge, and the identity of the species was not known I was not threatened by this revelation. I did give credit to him in my Reference section.

Some pictures of my doctoral and post-doctoral work are given in the Tour section slides.

While it was fun to do advance research, I had to find a job. Postdoctoral positions are temporary. My job at the University ended in May of 1971. There were no academic or industrial positions available. My professor found a postdoctoral position at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, IL where I had to work on an electrochemical project. No one usually dares to go into an advanced research level in another area, but I had no choice, so I accepted it. Years later I would find that to get research projects I would have to take up any project that came my way regardless of my previous background. And that was one of the secrets of my surviving power. I must say this second postdoc position was preparing me for that. I was becoming a true scientist, because a true scientist ventures into all fields of research!

I had to make another important decision before I moved to the new job. That was to visit back home and bring my family to America. There was some risk in it because I was still on a Student Visa with extension and would expire in nine months. I could, of course, apply for Green Card, but who knows how easy that would be, and whether I would have continuing employment. But I decided to take the chance (risk taking is part of research life, anyway), so I went home for a brief visit, and brought my family to Illinois. I got University housing which was inexpensive, so we started our family life with our six year old daughter and three year old son. They were admitted to local schools. There were plenty of school aged children to play with, so life for them was fun. A year later we had the last member of our family born, a son. Since my wife did not work, there was always the mother at home. I would come home for lunch every day. I have continued that practice ever since! To make it easier, I would rent or buy a home always close to the work place.

My postdoc work at Southern Illinois University brought new challenges. First I had to read a lot in the area and bring myself up to the 'postdoc' level, though it was a totally new field for me. For the first time I learned to make my own glass vacuum line, a glass manifold with vacuum pump, connecting ports to attach vessels and so on. Then there was this 'electrochemical synthesis' which I had to undertake which involved creating unstable molecules using electrolytic techniques. The catch was, I had to do everything out of contact with air and moisture. The solutions used were made with non-aqueous solvents carefully attached to the vacuum line. The solution to be electro-treated would be placed in a special cell. See Tour for my picture in front of the vacuum-line I had used.

My initial synthesis attempts soon changed to a serious project. I had to attempt electroplating titanium metal on to copper. The incentive was that naval ships with a steel exterior could be protected from sea-water corrosion by a protective coating of titanium. No one had done it before. Steel could be first coated with copper. The problem was titanium solutions when subjected to electrolytic deposition would tend to hydrolyze rather than produce the metal. So my recourse was the use of non-aqueous solvents.

At the end of the two year period after I had started working on it, I succeeded in plating out titanium on copper strips. I have read about how aluminum metal was mass produced using a non-aqueous electrolyte because aluminum, like titanium, has a high affinity for oxygen, and aqueous electrolytes cannot separate the metal.

Then the axe fell. The University which had funded the research from its own reserves cut off funding. I had to stop working there three years after I had arrived there. I did not become famous as Charles Martin Hall who had discovered the electrolytic process to produce Aluminum in 1886. I would have to do much more work to make my process commercially successful. In the mean time my permanent Visa application ran into a snag. The University called the Department of Labor, and finally when I got the Visa, I was unemployed, but still stationed in the same housing. A crisis was in the making. Then miracles followed, as it had happened previously in my life. I worked for a short period in a State lab, but was back to unemployed state. And I could not move out because of the pending status of my Visa.

Old friends are very valuable. One of my University of Washington colleagues had finally graduated and had become an assistant professor in Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh. In late 1976 we visited him and family for Thanksgiving. During conversation they learned of my unemployed status. Concerned, he had me prepare a resume. That Sunday we went to his Church, and he met a Westinghouse executive whom he knew and handed the resume.

We were on our way back to Carbondale, but stopped by in Indiana to see my brother and family who were still stationed there. While there I got a phone call from Westinghouse headquarters. They had an opening in Muncie, Indiana, north of Indianapolis at the Westinghouse Large Power Transformer Plant. So I went for the interview, and the boss who interviewed me was the manager of R&D there. He was also one of the authors of a technical book on Transformers, and the only one alive. Naturally he carried a lot of weight, and that would turn out to be an advantage for me later. All his people were electrical and mechanical engineers. No chemists. But he realized that he could use me because there was a Materials Testing lab there run by a technician with a biology background. They had purchased a gas analysis equipment for factory use, and an electrical engineer was trying to set it up. This task, of course, belonged to a Chemist! The main electrical insulation in power transformers was cellulosic materials, paper and pressboard, tons of them. I was knowledgeable on cellulose from my advanced chemistry studies. Besides chemical studies, there were mechanical tests on the strength of paper tapes that would be wrapped around copper conductors.

I was offered the job at entry level (which I felt was unfair, but I had no choice), and in ten days in subzero weather we were moved to the new location at Company expense. My trials were over! I became a Development Engineer from January 1977.

I worked there for six and a half years, and became a Senior Development Engineer, and had proved myself valuable by setting up new lab techniques and problem solving. I also started publishing technical papers. A restructuring in 1983 caused me to be transferred to a transformer research lab in Sharon, Pennsylvania on the border of Ohio-Pa. This lab was attached to the Medium Power Transformer Plant there, but was doing research projects for all Westinghouse Transformer Plants. I worked there for eight years. Then Westinghouse sold its Plants to a European manufacturer, Asea Brown Boveri (ABB). They closed down the lab there and opened a central lab on the campus of the NC State University in Raleigh in August 1991. So I moved to Raleigh, North Carolina with continuation of my service. An interesting observation is that I had bought only one transportation vehicle in India: it was a Raleigh bicycle! On October 1, 2000 I retired, but was allowed to continue as a part time Consultant there.

I managed some important and critical research projects and succeeded in them. This gave me exposure to the whole wide world in these areas. Particularly important were my study of an explosive failure of large transformers by Static electrification, similar to thunderbolts inside them. The final project I managed was the development of an environmentally friendly transformer fluid from vegetable oils. This was recognized as one of the top 100 inventions of 2000 for which the R&D 100 Award was given. We got several patents on it and the product is now commercial. ABB manufactures special transformers with this fluid in it as liquid insulation.

A more complete description of my R&D projects may be found in the Projects section. Pictures of several of these are given in the Career Tour Slide show.

The professional ranks I held from start to finish are given below:

- Development Engineer
- Senior Development Engineer
- Advanced Materials Engineer
- Fellow Scientist
- Advisory Scientist
- Executive Consulting R&D Engineer

The titles 'Scientist' and 'Engineer' were used interchangeably, but since I am not an engineer by training, I would prefer the Scientist title. Most of the time I was in Applied Research. Four out of five of the positions I held carried the title, 'Engineer'. Someone who could not afford to attend Engineering college for financial reasons alone found himself grouped with those with formal engineering degrees! However, I would not have been able to do the research without pursuing Science.

I may point out that every promotion I got was by asking for it! In Companies, it is not enough to do good work and produce results; you need to follow the biblical injunction, 'Ask, and Ye shall Receive!'

One of my fun slides in the Tour section shows that my office space was virtually the same in spite of all the promotions and pay rises. I joked that my bosses forgot to tell me to move to a larger office each time!

My research career was very rewarding as you can learn from the Tour and the Projects sections. Almost all my research was published in journals or magazines, and most were presented at technical conferences. I always enjoyed these presentations, and made every effort to make it enjoyable. I believe that scientists should refrain from jargon and should make their presentations as clear and simple as possible. A bonus for presenting papers was the opportunity to travel in USA and overseas. I managed to do some sightseeing in every place I went with my wife for many of the trips. One unintended benefit of publishing papers is that you achieve a kind of 'Immortality' on this side of life.

One more bit of information: the boss that hired me for my first Industrial job in 1977 has retired and is a Consultant. We see each other in meetings, sometimes making presentations side by side. My first supervisor working for that boss moved in and out of my career a few times, and he is back in the same department of the ABB research center in Raleigh as I am, though I don't work for him any more, he is my management link to ABB, What(or Who) goes around comes around, as the saying goes!

You may have noticed that I am not the Wizard of Menlo Park (Thomas Edison) or a Newton or an Einstein. My sulfur findings were certainly a significant one in doing away with the explanations given by some Nobel Prize winning Chemists, but as you saw, I could not even get a job with my discoveries. If I have a connection to a great Inventor, it is George Westinghouse who is credited with mass producing Transformers using AC current. Of course I never worked under him, but all my industrial research was on Transformers which you will read under Projects. I could perhaps have set up a lab and pursued my interests, but I felt that my life should not be absorbed in just making discoveries or acquiring wealth. There is a lot to life than Science and Invention, and I have enriched myself by reading in other fields and discovering my place in human history, enjoying life's pursuits including family and hobbies, and realizing my ultimate destiny.

For details on my family, you may go to Beyond Science and then to 'Author'.

And what about my twin brother who played key roles in my higher education? You have heard that identical twins have much in common. This is true to some extent in my case too. He is the only other close family member I have in USA, but when I moved East, he moved West, and settled in California. So we are on the Atlantic and the Pacific side of the continent, we are a continent apart! He pursued a Mathematics teaching career, sometimes branching to Computer Science. Like me, he has other interests that keep him busy a lot, and travels too. We have some similar gadgets like camcorders, and both have large libraries.

For those of you who like geography, I include a map of our beautiful but highly populated (with accompanying problems) State of Kerala. A collage of the pictures of my schools, colleges and universities that I attended is also included.

Kerala State lies at the southwestern part of India, in the tropics, and is famed for spices and greenery. Its eastern side is mountainous with forests. Kerala's Arabian Sea coast stretches some 300 miles.

Place names of marked locations:

1. Mundakayam
2. Changanacherry
3. Tiruvalla
4. Trivandrum (Capital)
5. Quilon
Place born: Alleppey (on the coast)

A collage of the schools, colleges and Universities I have attended is shown in the pictures below. All but the University of Washington are back home in Kerala. The Kerala educational system is much obliged to the British efforts to introduce western education and the English language to India. Kerala stands highest in literacy of all the States in India. Schools and colleges run by the government and religious institutions are found throughout the State. Kerala is also a concentration of Christians in India, comprising twenty percent of the population as compared with just under four percent country wide. The apostle St. Thomas is believed to have landed in the main port of Kerala in the first century introducing Christianity. I could claim that I came from the 'Land of St. Thomas'.

Please visit the Projects section for details of my exciting Industrial Research Career.

Hope you enjoyed my Life Bits!