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A Brief Biography

Belmannu Devadas Acharya was born on September 1947 in the west-coastal town of Udupi in the present State of Karnataka, India.

Due to his father’s transferable job in the Department of Cooperation, in the erstwhile State Government of Mysore (which became the present State of Karnataka in 1956), ‘Devadas’ did his school education in:

Govt. Primary School, Karwar (I and II)

Govt. Primary School, Belagavi (III and IV)

G.A. High School, Belagavi (V and VI)

P.D.J. High School, Bijapur (VII to XI)

his college education in:

B.V.B. College of Arts and Science (Karnatak University), Bidar (PUC & B.Sc.-I)

J.S.S. College of Arts and Science (Karnatak University), Dharwad (B.Sc.(Physics)-II&III)

his University education in:

Karnatak University, Dharwad (M.Sc.(Maths.)), 1971

and finally his doctoral degree at:

The Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (Ph.D.(Maths.), 1976. 

On  29th November 1975 he joined the Mehta Research Institute of Mathematics and Mathematical Physics (‘MRI’, now known as the  Harish-Chandra Research Institute), Department of Atomic Energy, Govt. of India, as Post-Doctoral Fellow and on 1st January 1980 was appointed as the first Assistant Professor of Mathematics at MRI.

 On 25th November 1976, he married Mukhtiar Kaur Gill (now Mukti Acharya), then a research scholar at MRI.

During his stay in MRI till Nov. 1985, he published 35 research papers, 6 monographs and edited one Proceedings of a National Symposium on Mathematical Modelling published by MRI. All these have been well reviewed by the Mathematical Reviews.

During  September-December 1982, he visited several institutions of higher learning in France and Germany as a Visiting Scientist. 

In  August 1984, ‘Dr. B.D. Acharya’ was selected by the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) as the  Principal Scientific Officer  at the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Govt. of India, New Delhi, and he joined the post on  20th November 1985 after completing all formalities. During his stay in DST, till his retirement on  30th September 2007, despite his heavy official preoccupation, he published more than 120 research papers, wrote three monographs and edited four Proceedings of national and international level Conferences/Workshops/Seminars/Group-Discussions, brought out by internationally reputed publishers.

On official fronts in DST, he was actively involved in promoting research in thrust areas of Atmospheric and Earth Sciences such as Himalyan Glaciology, Agrometerology, Monsoon Variability, Local Severe Storms, Forest Dynamics, Aviation Meteorology, Storm Surge, Geothermics, Geochemistry, Earthquake Research, Landslides and Avalanches, Hailstorms, Hydrology, Cloud Physics, Global Electric Circuit, Upper Atmosphere, Solar Terrestrial Energy Physics, Planetary Sciences, Science and Technology for Peaceful Utilization of Space, etc. From 1985 to 1996, he coordinated putting up the DST’s Exhibition Pavilion at the venues of the Indian Science Congress Association’s annual meets, where a special Stall was set up for show-casing applications of mathematics. In 2003, he led India’s scientific delegation in the first World Conference on Climate Variability held in Baltimore, U.S.A.

Further, in 1994, he created “Mathematical Sciences Office” in DST to promote research and advanced training in all thrust areas of Mathematical Sciences (which includes Mathematics, Statistics, Computer Science and Operations Research. Under this umbrella outfit, he was instrumental in creating the Institute of Advanced Study in Science & Technology (IASST), Guwahati, which later taken over by DST as an autonomous institution under its purview. Besides encouraging all major mathematical societies, and the national academies for science promotion, in the country in organizing their activities in mathematical sciences, he was instrumental in establishing six ‘Centers for Mathematical Sciences’ (CMS) with focus on different aspects of mathematics at six different places in the country (Banasthali, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Krisnankoil, Pala and Varanasi).

During his service in DST, he represented DST and served as a Member of the Council/Board of Governors of several autonomous research institutions under DST, M/o Environment & Forests, M/o Agriculture and M/o Statistics and Planning, Govt. of India. He originated the Indo-Hungarian Programme of Cooperation in Science and Technology and from November 1999 to February 2000, he visited the Hungarian Academy of Sciences as a Exploratory Visiting Professor to help DST to evolve the programme in meaningful directions. 

In the year 2003, he was elected a Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences (India) and in the same year was elected as a Fellow of the Allahabad Mathematical Society.   

Since 2008, he has been:

Adjunct Professor at the Center for Excellence in Interdisciplinary Mathematics, New Delhi

Visiting Full Professor at the CMS, Pala, Kerala

Visiting Professor at the CGRF, National Center for Advanced Research in

Discrete Mathematics (n-CARDMATH), Kalasalingam University, Krishnanloil

Honorary Visiting Professor at the SRC-IIIDMS, University of Mysore.

From  22nd October 2012, he has been appointed the first Director of Wrangler Dr. D.C. Pavate Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Karnatak University Campus, Dharwad.

-Addendum-

On 18th June 2013, during the International Conference of Discrete Mathematics, which he organized from June 10-14, 2013, in the Dr. D.C. Pavate Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Karnatak University Campus, Dharwad, after a brief illness, he left for his heavenly abode. He has left a large legacy of research publications as well as poems on various subjects. He used the pen name "Devapriya" in many of his poems. The above auto-biography was found by his son on his laptop.

-Reminiscences-