Dr. H.R. Chandrasekhar (Chandra) was born and raised in Holalkere, a village in the Chitradurga district of the province of Karnataka. After graduating from Holalkere High School and National College, Bangalore with first ranks and gold medals in science and Kannada literature, he received an M.S. in physics from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, and then a Ph.D. in physics from Purdue University at West Lafayette, Indiana (U.S.) in 1973. He then worked as a research scientist at the Max-Planck Institute for Condensed Matter Research in Stuttgart, Germany. During this two-year stint, he met his future wife Meera. They returned to the United States in 1978 to join the faculty of the Physics Department at the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri. Over the years Chandra has served as Department Chair, Professor of Physics, and Director of Graduate Studies. He retired from the University of Missouri in 2015. He was a recipient of the prestigious Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship and was a consultant to the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). He has authored several book chapters and over 150 publications. His book Tales from Indian Epics, published in 2001, was partly inspired by the palm leaf manuscript by Shri Ramannaiah, a forefather of Dr. Chandra, etched in 1755 C.E. Drs. Meera and Chandra have three daughters, Tara, Rajni and Indu.
