page_title: L. K. Doraiswamy
section_title: Academic and professional career
hierarchical_section_title: L. K. Doraiswamy / Academic and professional career
caption_attribution_description: English: Main Building of ACCET
context_page_description: Laxmangudi Krishnamurthy Doraiswamy was an Indian chemical engineer, author and academic, known for his contributions in developing Organic synthesis engineering as a modern science discipline. Chemical Engineering journal of McGraw Hill listed him among the 10 most distinguished chemical engineers in the world in 1988. He was the author of nine texts in chemical engineering, including Organic Synthesis Engineering, a 2001 publication which is known to have introduced the topic as a definitive scientific stream and Heterogeneous reactions: Analysis, Examples, and Reactor Design, reportedly the first comprehensive text in chemical engineering.
  He was a recipient of honorary doctorate degrees from University of Salford, and University of Wisconsin, besides several other awards and honors which included Om Prakash Bhasin Award, Richard H. Wilhelm Award, William H. Walker Award and Homi Bhabha Medal. The Government of India awarded him the third highest civilian honour of the Padma Bhushan, in 1990, for his contributions to science.
context_section_description: Doraiswamy's career started at R. L. Carlisle Chemical and Manufacturing Company of Brooklyn for a short stint of two years and he left US for India in 1954 to take up the position of a scientist at the National Chemical Laboratory (NCL), Pune where he continued his researches in chemical engineering. His tenure at NCL lasted a quarter of a century, rising in ranks as a senior scientist, assistant director (1961), deputy director (1966) and superannuating in 1989, as the first non-chemist to head the organization, after holding the post of the director since 1978. In between, he was reportedly offered the post of the director general of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the largest research and development (R&D) organisation in India, controlling 38 national laboratories, 39 outreach centres, 3 Innovation Complexes and 5 units, but he declined the offer to stay with NCL. It was at this time, NCL entered into a bilateral co-operation agreement with the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering of the Iowa State University and this led to his visit to Iowa where he met Peter Reilly, the then Anson Marston Distinguished Professor of the university. It is reported that Reilly persuaded Doraiswamy to join the university as the Glenn Murphy Visiting Professor of Engineering which he agreed to and, later, joined the institution as a permanent faculty in 1992 as the Herbert Stiles Professor. During his stay in Iowa, he was involved in various visiting lectures and symposia and became the Anson Marston Distinguished Professor, the highest academic honour for engineering academics at the university. He continued his association with the university even after his retirement in 2001 till his death 2012.
caption: Alagappa Chettiar College of Engineering and Technology.
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