Centenary Lectures

This distinguished lecture series was started as a [art of the centenary celebration 2007 (See council minutes dated 15-06-2007).  The first lecture was delivered by Prof. C. N. R. Rao on 24-01-2008 and since then several distinguished scientists have delivered the IISc Centenary Lecture.  Any distinguished Scientist/Engineering faculty from India and abroad may be invited to give this lecture.  The lecture is given a token honorarium (Rs.40,000/-), a silver plaque and bouquet.  A business class round trip air ticket (or two economy round trip tickets if accompanied by spouse) is paid to the lecturer and the lecturer is treated as the guest of the Institute.  There are no fixed number of such lectures in a year.

World Scientific Publishing Company Singapore and Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, will co-publish a series of prestigious lectures delivered during IISc’s centenary year (2008-09), and a series of textbooks and monographs, by prominent scientists and engineers from IISc and other institutions.

The “IISc Centenary Lecture Series” will comprise lectures by designated Centenary Professors — eminent teachers and researchers from all over the world. Professor C N R Rao’s book on “Trends in Chemistry of Materials” is the first volume in this Series.

  • C. N. R. Rao, Tall Oaks from Little Acorns: Birth and Growth of Solid State and Materials Chemistry, 24 Jan 2008
  • Andrew Viterbi, The Foundations of the Digital Wireless World, 27 May 2008
  • M. S. Swaminathan, Scientific Management of the Impact of Climate Change on Agriculture, 9 July 2008
  • Michael D. Fayer, Watching Ultrafast Molecular Motions in Liquids, Molecules and Proteins, 16 July 2008
  • A. R. Ravishankara, Ozone Layer Depletion and the World’s Response: A Model for Global Environmental Problems?, 2 Dec 2008
  • George Guy Dodson, The Origins of Structural Analysis and its Scope in Modern Biological Research, 19 Jan 2009
  • Ronald Breslow, Work on Organised Molecular Systems Leads to a Proposal for The Origin of Prebiotic Homochirality, 23 Jan 2009
  • Jean-Marie Lehn, Perspectives in Chemistry: From Molecular to Supramolecular Chemistry Towards Adaptive Chemistry, 11 Feb 2009
  • George Philander, The Hoax at the Equator that Elucidates the Ethical Dilemmas of Global Warming, 12 Mar 2009
  • Peter Wolynes, Landscapes of Matter, 8 July 2009
  • Shaul Mukemal, Multidimensional Spectroscopy of Biomolecules: From NMR to X-rays, 23 Dec 2009
  • Dennis P Sullivan, Effective Models and Algebraic Topology, 24 Dec 2009
  • Venkataraman Ramakrishnan, From Baroda to Cambridge: A Life in Science, 5 Jan 2010
  • Joseph Zyss, Molecular photonics—From Concepts to Applications in IT and Life Sciences, 15 Feb 2010
  • Francis Collins, Human Genome & Beyond, 3 Dec 2011
  • John Michael Wallace, Climate-Related Extreme Events: Teachable Moments, 25 Jan 2012
  • F. Fleming Crim, Controlling Reactions in Gases & Liquids, 15 Feb 2012
  • Kurt Wuthrich, Exploring the Protein Universe with Physics & Physical Chemistry Techniques, 3 April 2012
  • Knut Wolf Urban, Diving into the World of Atoms—Picometer Electron Microscopy, 6 Sep 2012
  • Roddam Narasimha, Cloud Flows, 19 July 2013
  • Andre Geim, Random Walk to Graphene, 6 Dec 2013
  • Jocelyn Bell Burnell, Reflection on the Discovery of Pulsars, 9 Jan 2014
  • James Fraser Stoddart, Radical Mechanostereo chemistry, 15 Jan 2014
  • Harold Varmus, New Directions in Cancer Research, 21 Jan 2014
  • Richard N, Zare, Detecting Reaction Intermediates in Solution and Guiding Cancer Surgery Using Mass Spectrometry, 5 Feb 2014
  • Prof. Thomas Kailath, Professor of Engineering Emeritus, Stanford University, California, USA, 15thDecember 2015.
  • Prof. Martin Gruebele, James R.Eiszner Chair in Chemistry, University of Illinois, Urbana Campaign, USA, 15th December 2016
  • Prof. Prasant V. Kamat, University of Notre Dame, Indiana, USA,  12 December 2017
  • Prof. Venkatesh Narayanamurti, Harvard University, CAmbridge, USA, 21 March 2018.