Man Mohan Sharma

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Man Mohan Sharma (born May 1, 1937 in Jodhpur, Rajasthan) is an eminent Indian chemical engineer. He was educated at Jodhpur, Mumbai and Cambridge. At the age of 27 years, he was appointed Professor of Chemical Engineering in the University of Mumbai, Department of Chemical Technology. He later went on to become the Director of MUICT, the first chemical engineering professor to do so from MUICT.

In 1990, he became the first Indian engineer to be elected as a Fellow of Royal Society, UK. He was awarded the Padma Bhushan and the Padma Vibhushan by the President of India and was also awarded the Leverhulme Medal of the Royal Society.

Excerpts of interview of Professor Sharma by Money Life

Money Life (ML): Professor Sharma, you spent most of your life in UDCT. Where were you born, what did you see?

Prof. Sharma: I was born in 1937, on the outskirts of Jodhpur. My grandfather worked for Bikaner State Railway and my father worked for Jodhpur State Railway. Jodhpur used to have extraordinary train connections. I first studied in a Maheshwari school, most of the schools at that time were community schools. Strangely, in the second standard, I was told to go upstairs, to the third standard. Formalism was absent at that time and I had been promoted. After I left school, I joined a college called Jaswant College. Rajasthan, then called Rajputana, was very backward at that time. The whole state had just one university. In 1954, when I did Inter Science, there were just about 1700 students.

ML: Did you top the exams?

Prof. Sharma: I did not top the university but was a rank holder. I chose to join a newly started engineering college called Mungiram Bangur Memorial College. Civil engineering was the most popular discipline but I did not like it. I noted that these guys did not do any work and suddenly became very rich. In fact, later, when I was slogging for my PhD, all my contemporaries in engineering college owned bungalows in Jodhpur. I had made a conscious decision of not joining civil engineering. The financial situation of my family was not very good. They could not afford to fund my education out of town. I told my parents that if it is unaffordable, I will do physics or chemistry but I won’t do civil engineering. I had a great fancy for chemistry and mathematics. I wanted to do chemical engineering. I cannot give you a clear reason why, but I developed a fancy for it. Mind you, in 1954, there was no chemicals industry. I asked several people where one could do chemical engineering but nobody could give me a clear direction. Interestingly, chemical engineering was the only subject, which was started as a part of the university curriculum. It was always available post BSc., never offered as a diploma course and so it became a natural part of a university. All other engineering courses started as a diploma course.

ML: But how did you land up in Bombay?

Prof. Sharma: It is a strange story. The chief minister of Rajasthan, Mohan Lal Sukhadia, was a diploma-holder in engineering from VJTI (Veermata Jijabai Technological Institute), the well-known engineering college in Mumbai. So, many people in Rajasthan were familiar with VJTI. A lot of people knew about Benaras Hindu University too. I wrote a postcard to VJTI telling them that I would like to study chemical engineering there. They passed it on to UDCT (University Department of Chemical Technology). UDCT sent me a form. Mumbai admissions were the earliest and before I knew, I got a telegram stating, ‘admitted, given seat in hostel’. So, I forgot all about Benaras and landed up in Mumbai, as a young boy of 17. Little did I know that I would spend the rest of my life here.

ML: How did you fund your education?

Prof. Sharma: We had a neighbour, a prosperous businessman who offered to help. My father also got some money from Railway Welfare Fund.

ML: What were your early experiences in Mumbai?

Prof. Sharma: Bombay was a wonderland for a boy from the desert and I will never forget two incidents. One was the very first day. I opened the water tap and found water gushing out. I had never seen tap water and that too flowing out with such force. The second was the monsoon, about which I did not have the foggiest idea, and I am not ashamed to admit it. The admissions were in June when the monsoon begins. On the first day of heavy rains, I and two other boys from the desert area stayed back in our rooms because it was raining like mad. During lunch time, our friends came from the hostel and asked us ‘are you sick? How come you did not turn up for the classes?’ We said, ‘we are fine. Look at how it is raining. Who can go out in such rains?’ Call us buffoons or whatever, we did not know that normal life could go on when it was raining like that...

ML: You continued with your post-graduate course in UDCT and did not go for a job. Why?

Prof. Sharma: The job situation was extraordinarily good. There were 20 students in the class; about 13 of them passed out in the first flush. We had multiple offers before we graduated. Companies like National Rayon and Century were willing to hire the entire class if they could. But I did not appear for a single interview. I did not want a job. I was the only one from the batch who stayed back to do full-time post-graduate research. So,I did my masters in UDCT and would have done a PhD too but there was no one to guide me. I became a temporary lecturer in late 1959, when I was 22, and so I had a little more money. My department very generously allowed me to go to the UK for research and the airfare was about Rs. 1300. One philanthropist offered to give me the money. But I was a Cambridge scholar, and the scholarship was really sumptuous. It not only paid for my fare and all my expenses but I could even save some money and send it back home. I went to the UK in September 1961 by boat. It was a great experience.

ML: What was your experience at Cambridge?

Prof. Sharma: Cambridge has a fascinating system. You do not register for PhD. You come to know whether you are in or out later. Within the first five months I had my papers published in the renowned journals. My quality of work was good enough to fetch me a PhD in one year. The person who guided me was from a very aristocratic background and used to write extremely well. I picked up English and many other finer things in life from him, apart from teaching myself by reading classics and newspapers like Manchester Guardian and The London Times. I joined the doctoral program in October and, by next May, I requested him to refer me to some industry for summer training. He had superb connections. I did eight weeks in ICI plc, one of the most extraordinary chemical companies in the world. I also wrote a monograph with my guide on a concept that was unique at that time - how we can go from fundamentals of chemistry to final industrial design. It became a benchmark in the world literature of chemical engineering. Nothing like this existed at that time. Another major milestone was a patent in my own name that I got in 1964, when I was 27, financed by Shell through Cambridge.

ML:What was the patent about?

Prof. Sharma: To put it simply, it is a better way of acid gas removal using cheaper and better reagents. It was an idea. The scientific paper was in my name. You don’t publish a paper till you have a preliminary patent. Cambridge got a patent attorney and told me to first protect myself. My guide wrote to one of top guys in Shell saying that he should look at my work. I took a Fokker Friendship flight to Amsterdam. The man next to me got into a conversation with me. He asked me ‘where are you going’. I said ‘I am going to Amsterdam’. ‘Oh, you are Sharma? I am going to see you tomorrow.’ What I had done with that patent is a part of Cambridge folklore because no one had sold an idea to a large company. I had the patent in my own name. Shell had paid me a thousand pounds which was a lot of money in those days. It was much more than my annual salary in Bombay later. I had an offer to join Shell anywhere in the world I wanted, including in NOCIL, which was coming up in India.

ML:You could have researched at Cambridge.

Prof. Sharma: I could have. I had offers from the US universities too. But I did not want to go. Performing there is different from performing in India, in my own school. IIT Delhi was coming up with British collaboration and I was invited to go there. I refused. I had to go back to my school because I had some moral commitment. When I needed a job, they had given me the job of a lecturer and then allowed me to go to Cambridge. When I came back, I was asked to put in an application for a professor of chemical engineering. I refused. I said, I do not deserve to be a professor. I am too young. Give me readership with good increments so that I can keep my body and soul together. Bombay University created history by making me a professor at 27. They gave me that position on promise. After all, I had no record as a professor. People thought I was lucky. It was the biggest risk of my life. I had great jobs in industries where it is easy to perform. In academics, we had to compete globally by publishing papers in the best journals of the world. If you fail as a professor at 28, you are doomed for the rest of your life. Interestingly, the only interview I ever appeared for in my life, was for that job as a professor.