Satish Dhawan was born on 25 September 1920 in Srinagar, Kashmir state in India, and passed away on 3 January 2002 in Bangalore, at 81 years of age.
India has a long list of scientists and scholars who have contributed a lot to the country’s social and economic causes. People like Vikram Sarabhai, Satish Dhawan are certainly on the top of that list.
In this post, we will discuss Satish Dhawan’s biography, his childhood, education, family, contribution, awards, etc and also go through why Satish Dhawan has such a high regard in India’s scientific community.
Satish Dhawan Biography (Quick Glance)
| Name | Satish Dhawan |
| Also known as | Father of experimental fluid dynamics research in India |
| Birth | 25 September 1920 |
| Place of birth | Srinagar, Kashmir, India |
| Height | 5.70 ft or 1.73 meters |
| Age | 81 |
| Zodiac | Libra |
| Parents | Father – Devidayal Dhawan, Mother – Lakshmi Khosla |
| School | Schooling – Ludhiana |
| College | BA (Maths & Physics) – Lahore, MA (English), McLagan College of Engineering (Lahore) |
| Higher Education (Overseas) | MSc in Aerospace Engineering (Minneapolis), Aeronautical Engineering from California Institute of Technology, Double PhD in Mathematics & Aerospace Engineering |
| Career | IISc Bangalore, ISRO, Indian Space Commission, National Aerospace Laboratories, Bangalore, etc. |
| Wife | Nalini Dhawan |
| Children | Son – Vivek Dhawan, Daughters – Jyotsna & Amrita Dhawan |
| Awards | Indira Gandhi award, Padma Shri, Padma Vibhushan, etc. |
| Achievements | INSAT, IRS, PSLV, Aryabhata |
| Death place | Bangalore |
Satish Dhawan Biography: Age, Birth, Parents
Satish Dhawan was born on 25 September 1920 to father Devidayal Dhawan and mother Lakshmi Khosla. Satish’s father Devidayal Dhawan started his career as a lawyer and he was then promoted to Judge in the Lahore high court.
Also, Satish Dhawan’s maternal grandfather Dhunichand Khosla was the Chief Health Officer of Kashmir province and was highly respected over his contribution during the plague epidemic in the 1900s.
Thus, Satish was born in an educated family with high values, and the same was instilled in him from a very young age. Due to his father Devidayal working in judicial services, Satish’s family had to travel a lot.
Satish obviously could not spend a lot of time at one place in his childhood, so his parents arranged for private teachers at his home.
Satish Dhawan Biography: Education
Satish did his 10th and 12th from Ludhiana, however, soon after that, his father had to transfer to Lahore (British India before partition) due to official duty, so he had to continue with his education from Lahore.
Satish completed his graduation in B.A. from Government college of Lahore in Mathematics as well as Physics.
At that time, the British were ruling India, so for anyone to have a good career opportunity, English language was a necessity.
In 1941, Satish Dhawan earned his M.A. degree in English literature. His quest for further education did not stop here, and he went on to join McLagan College of Engineering at Lahore.
Not only he completed his education there, Satish also topped the entire university to become the province’s first gold medallist.
His high marks throughout his academics earned him a government scholarship in 1945, so he went to the US for higher education.
This was a time when the second world war had just ended and academic classes in the aerospace department of Caltech University, Californica had not started.
Thus, Satish decided to instead join the aeronautical department of the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. After a year of hard work and studies, Satish deservedly earned a Master’s degree in Aeronautical Engineering.
In 1947, Satish Dhawan completed his doctoral studies at the Gallicton Study Center under the guidance of Hans W. Lippmen, a famous American fluid dynamicist, aerospace scientist.
Satish Dhawan Biography: Wife and Children
Satish Dhawan married Nalini Nirodi in Shimla on 8 June 1956. Nalini was an accomplished cytogeneticist from Karnataka.
She earned her cytogenetics degree from Washington University, St. Louis. At that time, she had just returned to her hometown Bangalore after a PhD.
It is believed that Satish had accidentally run into Nalini near the Aeronautics Department at IISc, on the avenue outside the Aero Dept after a visit to her father B. S. Nirodi at the IISc Nursery.
It was mostly love at first sight for these two, and as soon as Devidayal and Lakshmi heard the news from their son Satish, they brought Nalini to stay with them in Old Delhi.
Together, the couple had 3 children Vivek, Amrita and Jyotsna Dhawan.
Satish Dhawan Biography: Career at The Indian Institute of Science
Before Satish left for the US in 1945, he joined the aeronautical department of the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) in Bengaluru.
This was a one year internship, during this course, Satish engaged in the assembly and repair of warplanes. India was still ruled by the British, and world war 2 was going on, so there was a lot of work at HAL for Satish.
This opportunity gave Satish a lot of exposure in the field of aviation, which will later be useful for him as well as the Indian space industry.
After completing his education from the US, Satish returned to India in 1951 to join Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bangalore as a Senior Scientific Officer.
Right from the beginning, Satish was a visionary teacher and was always able to find a way to explain his teachings in an easy way to his students with the help of examples, pictures, etc.
Due to his exemplary knowledge, he was soon promoted to Assistant Professor. Soon, in the year 1955, Satish became the head of the Aeronautical Department.
At Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Satish during his spare time designed all the necessary equipment for his studies and equipped his own laboratory.
It was during the same time at IISc, Satish was able to invent the first supersonic wind tunnel. The purpose of this tunnel was to test the situations experienced by rockets in actual flight conditions.
When Satish was only 42 years old, he took over as the Director of the Indian Institute of Science.
He was not just the youngest to hold such a high position, but he also led IISc for the highest ever tenure of almost 20 years from 1962-1981.
During his tenure at IISc, Dhawan was responsible for initiating a lot of new departments such as Applied Mathematics, Materials Science, Biophysics etc.
He also brought a lot of skilled researchers, professors to join the esteemed institute as a Director.
Satish Dhawan Biography: Career at The ISRO
After the untimely death of Homi Bhabha and Vikram Sarabhai, the Indian scientific and atomic community was in a difficult situation and pretty much without leadership.
During 1971 and 1972, Satish Dhawan was the Director at Indian Institute of Science and occasionally, he used to visit Institute of Technology, California to teach his students.
The Prime Minister Indira Gandhi requested Satish to return to India and lead ISRO. Although Satish in the past had denied the leadership of the country’s leading scientific institutions, but this was an offer from the PM of India.
To start his new role as the chief of ISRO, Satish Dhawan kept 2 conditions in front of the PM.
- Condition 1: He wanted to continue as Director of IIS
- Condition 2: ISRO should be based in Bangalore
His demands were accepted and as soon as he came back from the US, he took over the responsibility as the Chairman of ISRO and Director of IISc.
The reason he wanted Bangalore as the main hub for ISRO, because he wanted IISc, NAL, HAL, BEL factories to work together for effective satellite construction, since all these institutions were already in Bangalore.
Due to his vision in those years, Bangalore is currently the IT hub and Silicone Valley of India.
One of the most overwhelming conditions was that Satish will take a nominal salary of one rupee per month as the head of ISRO.
As soon as he started with ISRO, he established a new “Department of Space” under the central government, and also established a “Space Commission” with scientists, engineers and administrators as members.
His plan was to create long term strategies for India’s space program, and he achieved that by starting three different organizations of ISRO in different places to work in coordination.
Satish Dhawan was also responsible for the successful launch of Satellite Launch Vehicle, however, this did not come easy for ISRO.
It was during this time Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam was handling the SLV project under the leadership of Satish Dhawan.
The first SLV was launched from the Sriharikota launch pad in 1979, however, the project failed due to faults in the control system of the second stage in the vehicle.
When it was time to face the media and their questions on the project failure, Satish asked Dr Kalam to take a backseat and instead, he answered all the questions calmly and took responsibility for the failure.
In a matter of 12 months, the SLV3 rocket was successfully launched again on July 18, 1980. This was a huge success and with this win, India joined an elite group of limited nations with the capability to build launch vehicles.
However, this time, Satish did not lead the press conference, instead, he sent Dr Kalam to face the music of victory. This was the kind of leadership style Satish Dhawan had at that time.
Soon after this, plans for design of satellite carriers such as PSLV, GSLV were underway.
In addition to this, thanks to Satish Dhawan’s plans and efforts, Aryabhata satellite was successfully launched by a Soviet Union rocket on 25 April 1975.
During the 10 years of Satish Dhawan’s leadership, India’s space program saw extraordinary growth and success and paved a way for future launches.
Prof. Satish Dhawan retired from the Indian Institute of Science in 1981 after a distinguished 19 year career.
3 years later, in 1984, he handed over ISRO’s chairmanship to Prof. U.R. Rao as his successor and retired from ISRO.
Satish Dhawan Biography: Invention and Contributions
- Satellite Instructional Television Experiment (SITE): This was an experimental satellite communications project launched in India in 1975, designed jointly by NASA and the ISRO. The project made available informational television programs for 4 hours a day to villages in 6 states of India.
- STEP project (Satellite Telecommunication Experiment Project): This was a project jointly co-ordinated by ISRO and Department of Posts and Telegraphs. The experiment helped to establish daily communications for satellites built by France and Germany (Symphony).
- APPLE (The Ariane Passenger PayLoad Experiment): This was India’s first communication satellite, which was successfully launched by the European Space Agency’s Ariane launch vehicle.
- Bhaskara-1: This was the first experimental remote sensing satellite built in India in 1979. The onboard TV camera on this satellite was used in the field of Hydrology and Forestry.
- Rohini: On 18 July 1980, Rohini was successfully launched under the second experimental launch of the SLV-3 rocket.
Satish Dhawan Biography: Awards
In recognition towards his contribution to space and society, Prof Satish Dhawan was commended by organizations from various countries, whereas some universities even felicitated him with honorary doctorates.
Some of his most celebrated awards were:
- Padma Bhushan (1971),
- Padma Vibhushan (1981),
- Karnataka Rajyotsava Award (1984),
- Indira Gandhi Award for National Integration (1999)
- Distinguished Alumni Award from Indian Institute of Science and California Institute of Technology (1969)
Satish Dhawan Biography: Death
Satish Dhawan who carried forward the legacy of Vikram Sarabhai and led two esteemed institutions, left this world on 3rd January 2002 at the age of 81.
Due to his outstanding efforts and contribution, India scaled new heights in the field of science, space and technology. To honour his contributions, ISRO’s Sriharikota launch centre was later renamed as Satish Dhawan Space.