Dr. V.Mahadeva Iyer lost his father at the age of two and was brought up single handedly by his widowed mother. He came to Chennai from Tirunelveli for the first time after completing high school in a village school. He got admission into the B Sc / MSc Chemistry Honours program at Presidency College in Chennai on merit and then did his Ph D in Polymer Chemistry in A C College of Technology under Prof.M. Santhappa. After two post doctoral stints at NCL Pune and at Northwestern University near Chicago, Illinois USA he came back to India unlike many of his colleagues of the time and joined IIT Madras as a lecturer in 1966. His next time abroad was a mid career sabbatical of 2 years in the late seventies at the University of Texas in Austin where he worked for the first time with bio catalysts. This became a lifelong research interest. In his career at IIT Madras he produced innumerable papers and guided over 25 Ph D students successfully. He was a co-author in a book on Physical Chemistry which is now part of the undergraduate curriculum in Chemistry at many colleges in India. He retired as a Professor in 1993 from IIT Madras.
IIT Madras gives people an opportunity to endow a Chairs, with an initial corpus of Rs.1 Cr.
The Chairs are intended to recognize senior IIT Madras professors for exceptional performance.
Chairs will be named by IITM in consultation with the Donor.
