WARRENDALE, PA—The Von Hippel Award, the Materials Research Society’s (MRS) highest honor, will be presented to C.N.R. Rao, Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research. Rao is being recognized “for his immense interdisciplinary contributions to the development of novel functional materials, including magnetic and electronic properties of transition metal oxides, nanomaterials such as fullerenes, graphene and 2D inorganic solids, superconductivity and colossal magnetoresistance in rare-earth cuprates and manganates." Conferred annually, the Von Hippel Award recognizes those qualities most prized by materials scientists and engineers—brilliance and originality of intellect, combined with vision that transcends the boundaries of conventional scientific disciplines, as exemplified by the life of Arthur von Hippel.
Rao will accept the honor during the Awards Ceremony of the 2017 MRS Fall Meeting in Boston on November 29. There, he will present his award lecture, Glimpses of Six Decades of Research in Materials Chemistry.
Rao is one of the world's foremost solid-state and materials chemists, having contributed to the development of the field for over five decades. His work on transition metal oxides has led to basic understanding of novel phenomena and the relationship between materials properties and the structural chemistry of these materials.
Rao was one of the earliest to synthesize 2D oxide materials such as La2CuO4. His work has led to a systematic study of compositionally controlled metal-insulator transitions. Such studies have had a profound impact in application fields such as colossal magnetoresistance and high-temperature superconductivity. Oxide semiconductors hold unusual promise. In addition to his work on hybrid materials, over the past two decades he has also made immense contributions to the field of nanomaterials.
Rao is currently the Linus Pauling Research Professor at the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, Bangalore, which he founded in 1989. He was appointed Chair of the Scientific Advisory Council to the Indian Prime Minister in January 2005, a position which he had occupied earlier, from 1985–1989. He is also the director of the International Centre for Materials Science (ICMS) and serves on the board of the Science Initiative Group. He shares co-authorship of around 1500 research papers and has co-authored and edited 45 books.
About the Materials Research Society
MRS is an organization of over 13,000 materials researchers from academia, industry and government worldwide, and a recognized leader in promoting the advancement of interdisciplinary materials research and technology to improve the quality of life. MRS members are students and professionals hailing from physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics and engineering—the full spectrum of materials research. Headquartered in Warrendale, Pennsylvania (USA), MRS membership now spans 90 countries, with approximately 45 percent of members residing outside the United States.
MRS serves and engages members across generations to advance their careers and promote materials research and innovation. The Society produces high-quality meetings and publications, assuring that members of all career stages can present and publish their most important and timely work to an international and interdisciplinary audience. MRS continues to expand its professional development portfolio, as well as promote diversity and inclusion in the scientific workforce, with career services for researchers worldwide. The Society advocates for the importance of scientific research and innovation to policymakers and the community. And the MRS Awards program honors those whose work has already had a major impact in the field, as well as those whose work shows great promise for future leadership.
For more information about the Materials Research Society visit
mrs.org and follow
@Materials_MRS.