MIT wanted him, so did Vikram Sarabhai: how EV Chitnis, who turns 100 today, was crucial to India’s space programme | India News

Chitnis turns 100 on July 25.

“My household has an extended historical past courting again to Shivaji Maharaj’s occasions within the 1630s… Our household bought its title Chitnis from Shivaji Maharaj, however the household title was initially Chitre. My ancestors had been appointed as Shivaji’s Chitnis (a title chargeable for dealing with all official communication and correspondence). The Chitres remained related all through the Maratha empire’s reign,” Chitnis mentioned.

Born in Kolhapur in pre-Impartial India, Chitnis did his education and better training in Poona (now Pune), spending his early life dwelling within the peth areas (outdated Pune metropolis) and in Pune Camp locality. Each these worlds gave Chitnis the right combination of conventional and cosmopolitan upbringing and outlook. His father was a medical physician and would typically should deal with sufferers from different nationalities, together with the Englishmen who resided within the area again then.

“My father was keen on horse racing and horses. He typically took me alongside to the Poona race course,” Chitnis mentioned, pulling out a fond reminiscence on this connection. As soon as, an Arab affected person had consulted his father and was cured from his extended sickness.

“In return, the Arab affected person visited our house in Pune camp and provided my father a white pony as a present. I used to be too elated with the considered lastly getting a horse at house, however my dream shattered very quickly. After thanking the affected person for the reward, my father politely declined the supply. He remarked that accepting it might be like having a ‘white elephant’ at house!” recalled Chitnis.

Childhood classes

He added that his childhood years rising up within the peth areas and Pune Camp through the Nineteen Thirties allowed him to develop and be taught necessary classes on communication, society, meals and tradition early on by means of his interactions with associates from the Parsi, Muslim, Christian, and Hindu communities, apart from the Arabs and the British.

After horses, younger Chitnis loved cricket and wouldn’t miss tuning in to the radio commentary throughout each match. “I discovered to talk English, particularly the numbers, even earlier than formally studying the language at school… All because of the cricket commentary relayed on the radio,” he mentioned.

On the peak of India’s freedom motion, Chitnis and his associates would attend examine courses organised by all political events after faculty hours. The Isro veteran mentioned, “We had been all dwelling in tumultuous occasions, and India’s freedom rebellion was gaining momentum. As faculty college students, we might attend examine courses throughout evenings. This helped us to remain up to date about what Mahatma Gandhi, Pandit Nehru and different freedom fighters had been doing to oust the British Raj.”

An alumnus of Sir Parashurambhau School, Wadia School and the distinguished Massachusetts Institute of Expertise (MIT), USA, Chitnis married Kumud Samarth. She was a most cancers researcher who was coaching within the US earlier than their wedding ceremony and continued to pursue her analysis post-marriage and through their keep in Ahmedabad.

“My associates would tease me that I’m marrying a foreign-returned woman!” he mentioned, laughing. Kumud Chitnis handed away in June 2020.

Affiliation with Vikram Sarabhai

Chitnis was Vikram Sarabhai’s right-hand man. To this point, he has fond recollections of his first interplay with Sarabhai, the daddy of India’s house programme, someday in October 1952. It was throughout Chitnis’ job interview for a put up on the Textile Analysis Affiliation in Ahmedabad that the 2 met.

“I needed to work as a researcher on the Bodily Analysis Laboratory (PRL) and to take action, I wanted the job. In the course of the ultimate spherical of the interview, for which Sarabhai was additionally current, I requested him up entrance whether or not he was Vikram Sarabhai. To which, he responded, ‘I’m Vikram’.”

Chitnis labored as a lecturer at a school in Gujarat’s Anand until Sarabhai managed to get him funded by means of a scholarship. Chitnis lastly joined Sarabhai’s group on March 16, 1953. Their affiliation grew stronger as India’s house programme took form. Staff Sarabhai established the Indian Nationwide Committee for Area Analysis (INCOSPAR) in 1962 and later ISRO in 1969.

MIT comes knocking

Sarabhai stored Chitnis busy at Kodaikanal over the following two years on a cosmic ray challenge carried out in collaboration with MIT. Impressed along with his work, MIT provided Chitnis a researcher’s job however he flatly declined the supply. Shocked, MIT wrote to Sarabhai, who then insisted that the younger Chitnis take up the brilliant alternative.

“There was a number of information which was analysed at MIT, and memorable work was later printed. It took three months for the information of the Indo-China struggle of 1962 to trickle all the way down to a big Indian inhabitants. That was when Sarabhai determined to provoke the house programme in India, with a imaginative and prescient for laying the nation’s satellite tv for pc communication and utilizing it successfully to enhance training, meteorology, atmosphere and agriculture,” Chitnis informed.

In July 1961, Sarabhai recalled Chitnis from the US and gave him the duty of planning India’s house programme and arising with a particular roadmap. This, whereas Sarabhai was concurrently working with the federal government on this concept.

India had no prior expertise of creating rockets or propellants until then. Sarabhai first tasked Chitnis with the situation hunt for an appropriate rocket-launching web site. And Chitnis was conscious that his function and inputs had been essential. “I visited Cape Canaveral within the US. It gave me an thought of what an area port ought to appear like,” he mentioned.

Cape Canaveral, house to the Kennedy Area Heart and the Cape Canaveral Area Pressure Station, is a key rocket launching web site within the US.

Scouting for a launch web site

Again in India, Chitnis and a handful of younger colleagues made a number of journeys to Kerala, scouting for a rocket launch web site. They took a number of chopper rides between the Ashtamudi kayal (backwaters) in Quilon (current day Kollam district) and Thiruvananthapuram – searching for a great land to arrange rocket launch pads for performing sounding rocket experiments. He shared an attention-grabbing story of certainly one of his visits to the Kerala coastal web site.

“Since there was no official automobile owned by PRL until then, I made a decision to first take a bus from the quarters, then an autorickshaw and attain Ahmedabad airport. Just a little earlier than I set out, Sarabhai rang me up enquiring in regards to the journey. Upon studying my plans to get to the airport, he requested to remain again, and he personally drove me to the airport. Seeing me with Sarabhai, many on the airport had been stunned. Thereafter, each flight I took out of Ahmedabad airport, I’d be given celebrity-like remedy by the airport employees,” remembered Chitnis.

It was in November 1962 that Thumba, a small fishing island close to Thiruvananthapuram, was lastly chosen for the institution of India’s Equatorial Rocket Launching Station. Thumba was a great location, nearer to the magnetic equator, thus allowing the budding house scientists to take up early experiments with the ambiance and ionosphere.

Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru throughout an interplay with ISRO scientists in 1962. Vikram Sarabhai (2L) and Eknath Chitnis (4L, subsequent to Nehru in swimsuit) seen explaining the working of satellites (Picture Credit score – The Indian Categorical archive)

“We had been principally in Quilon and Thiruvananthapuram. Kerala is a fantastic and inexperienced state,” he mentioned, including that the then governor of Kerala, V V Giri, had generously hosted the Isro group throughout a few of their visits.

When Sarabhai wished to increase the rocket launches and house programme, Chitnis and firm had been as soon as once more roped in and despatched to check India’s east coast for organising a full-fledged house port.

Within the Nineteen Seventies, India’s house journey took off from Sriharikota.

Reduce to February 2025, when Isro but once more tasted success following its a centesimal launch and Chitnis mentioned, “I bear in mind first going to Sriharikota… Virtually a barren land, an enormous island off the Andhra Pradesh coast. But it surely was good for rocket launches.”

Discovering A P J Abdul Kalam

India could not have identified its Missile Man Dr A P J Abdul Kalam, the previous scientist with Isro and the Defence Analysis and Improvement Organisation (DRDO), if it weren’t for Chitnis. He mentioned, “I, together with Sarabhai, and two others, had been on the interview panel to pick candidates for a coaching programme organised by NASA (Nationwide Aeronautics and Area Administration). Sarabhai requested me to evaluation Kalam’s utility, and impressed by his {qualifications}, I advisable him for the programme.”

Many a long time later, when Kalam was serving because the eleventh President of India, Chitnis and his household paid him a go to on the Rashtrapati Bhavan. “I at all times bear in mind Prof E V Chitnis as a father determine in Bodily Analysis Laboratory, integrating scientists and technologists and as one of many pioneers of the SITE (Satellite tv for pc Tutorial Tv Experiment ) programme…,” Dr Kalam had spoken in his deal with on the World Area Imaginative and prescient 2050 and India, a programme organised to dedicate the Insat-4B satellite tv for pc to the nation at Hassan, Karnataka, in June 2007.

Chitnis was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 1985. 4 a long time later, his son, Dr Chetan Chitnis, was awarded the Padma Shri in 2025. The junior Chitnis research malaria parasites and is at present on the Institut Pasteur, France.

Settling down in Pune

Submit-superannuation because the director of the Area Software Centre (SAC), Ahmedabad, Chitnis moved to Pune, the place he continues to reside. “We left Ahmedabad in 1988 and considered spending a while at Pune College. For nearly 20 years, I taught there…and I had nice enjoyable instructing,” he mentioned.

He remained related to the College of Pune, participating in lectures on communications and associated matters. The final batch he engaged was a part of a course on Improvement Communication on the Division of Communication Research (now renamed as Division of Media and Communication Research) throughout 2012 – 2013.

Talking about his life, Chitnis mentioned just lately, “I eat and sleep effectively and am having fun with life. I eat regular, home-cooked meals however by no means a heavy meal. I get pleasure from fish and rooster. Now I’m fully relaxed… Except one is relaxed, one doesn’t stay lengthy.”

A lover of Indian classical music and an avid reader, Chitnis would, till current years, spend the late-night hours catching up on the newest developments by means of books in addition to English and Marathi newspapers. However of late, he has been doing restricted studying. “I do learn however choose brief items on historical past… see, I’m linked to Maratha historical past,” he mentioned.