Mushi Santappa

Biography

Mushi Santappa was born on 2 October 1923 in Jonnagiri village in the south Indian state of Andhra Pradesh to Arikeri Basappa-Rajoli couple and graduated in chemistry from the University of Madras in 1943. His master's degree was from Banaras Hindu University in 1946 after which he secured a PhD from the University of London on a Government of India scholarship in 1949, mentored by R. W. West. Staying back in the UK, he obtained another PhD in 1951 from Manchester University, working under the guidance of Meredith Gwynne Evans, a Fellow of the Royal Society; his thesis was based on the physical chemistry of high polymers. Returning to India, he joined the University of Madras as a reader of physical chemistry in 1952 and in 1958, he was transferred to the Madurai Extension Centre (present-day Madurai Kamaraj University) as a professor. He returned to Chennai in 1963 as the head of the department of physical chemistry. Serving as a UGC Senior Professor at the university from 1966 onward, he also worked as a director at Central Leather Research Institute (CLRI) from 1972. In 1979, he was appointed as the vice chancellor of Sri Venkateswara University, Tirupati and on expiry of his tenure in 1980, he returned to Chennai and took up the assignment as the vice chancellor of the University of Madras in 1981 where he stayed till 1984. While working as the UGC professor, he co-founded Avanti Leather Limited, a public limited company involved in the manufacture and export of leather products, in 1976.

Santappa was married to Lakshmi Devi and the couple has three daughters and two sons. He died on 26 February 2017, in Chennai, at the age of 93.

Legacy

Santappa's early researches during his doctoral studies were related to vinyl monomers.4 and its free radical polymerization using light but later, he shifted his focus to the study of kinetics of vinyl polymerization during his stint at the laboratory of Meredith Gwynne Evans. Through these studies, he propounded that vinyl monomers could be polymerized using photo polymerization. He also demonstrated the synthesis of graft copolymers by simple chain transfer process and also studied oxidation of a number of organic substrates.

His researches have been published in over 350 articles and he guided 59 research scholars on the doctoral studies. Moreover, he published a comprehensive text on the State of the Art in Polymer Science and Engineering in India. Together with Santi K. Palit, a known chemist, he promoted research in polymer science at the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science and was one of the organizers of the International Symposium on Polymers, under the aegis of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry, held in Chennai in 1983. He served as the chair of the Science and Society project of the Department of Science and Technology and has been an adviser to the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board. It was during his tenure as the vice chancellor, the University of Madras established department Energy and department of Polymer Science and Technology. He was also a national professor and member of the University Grants Commission and has sat in the council of the Indian National Science Academy.

Awards and honors

The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research awarded Santappa the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize, one of the highest Indian science awards, in 1967. He received the Sir J. C. Ghosh Memorial Medal of the Indian Chemical Society in 1982 and the FICCI Award for Science and Technology of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry in 1985. He was also a recipient of the Sri Kanchi Mahaswami Trust and the Voice Award for Science and Technology of Leather. He received an honorary DLitt from Gulbarga University and the degree of Doctor of Science (honoris causa) from Andhra University, Madras University, Sri Krishna Devaraya University and Madurai Kamaraj University. He was an elected fellow of all the three major Indian sciences academies, Indian Academy of Sciences (1961), Indian National Science Academy (1971) and National Academy of Sciences, India (1983). He was also a fellow of Royal Institute of Chemistry (1970) and the New York Academy of Sciences (1985) and a founder fellow of the Academy of Sciences Chennai. The Society for Polymer Science, India have instituted an annual award, Professor M. Santappa Award, in his honor, which recognizes excellence in research in polymer chemistry.