Madhavan Pillai Ramakrishna Kurup was an Indian rocket scientist and the founder of the first solid rocket propellant plant in India at the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre. He is known to have contributed to the successful launching of the

Augmented Satellite Launch Vehicle The Augmented Satellite Launch Vehicle or Advanced Satellite Launch Vehicle, also known as ASLV, was a small-lift launch vehicle five-stage solid-fuel rocket developed by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) to place 150 kg satellite ...

(ASLV) as the director of the VSSC centre in

Thiruvananthapuram Thiruvananthapuram (; ), also known by its former name Trivandrum (), is the capital of the Indian state of Kerala. It is the most populous city in Kerala with a population of 957,730 as of 2011. The encompassing urban agglomeration populati ...

. The

Government of India The Government of India (ISO: ; often abbreviated as GoI), known as the Union Government or Central Government but often simply as the Centre, is the national government of the Republic of India, a federal democracy located in South Asia, c ...

awarded him the fourth highest civilian award of

Padma Shri Padma Shri (IAST: ''padma śrī''), also spelled Padma Shree, is the fourth-highest Indian honours system, civilian award of the Republic of India, after the Bharat Ratna, the Padma Vibhushan and the Padma Bhushan. Instituted on 2 January 1954, ...

in 1990.

Biography

Kurup was born in

Chengannur Chengannur (also spelled Chengannoor or Chenganur) is a Municipality in the Alappuzha district of Kerala State, India. It is located in the extreme eastern part of the Alappuzha district, on the banks of Pamba River. Chengannur is north of ...

, in the south Indian state of

Kerala Kerala ( ; ) is a state on the Malabar Coast of India. It was formed on 1 November 1956, following the passage of the States Reorganisation Act, by combining Malayalam-speaking regions of the erstwhile regions of Cochin, Malabar, South ...

to C. N. Madhavan Pillai, a lawyer. Kurup started his career by joining the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC) of the

Indian Space Research Organisation The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO; ) is the national space agency of India, headquartered in Bengaluru. It operates under the Department of Space (DOS) which is directly overseen by the Prime Minister of India, while the Chairman ...

(ISRO). He worked in VSSC in various capacities such as General Manager, Deputy Director and Chief Executive of Chemicals, Materials and Propulsion unit where he had the opportunity to work alongside

A. P. J. Abdul Kalam Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam (; 15 October 193127 July 2015) was an Indian aerospace scientist and statesman who served as the 11th President of India from 2002 to 2007. He was born and raised in Rameswaram, Tamil Nadu and studied phy ...

, the space scientist who would later become the

President of India The president of India ( IAST: ) is the head of state of the Republic of India. The president is the nominal head of the executive, the first citizen of the country, as well as the commander-in-chief of the Indian Armed Forces. Droupadi Murmu ...

. During his tenure there, he established the first solid rocket propulsion plant in the country for propellants, propulsion and pyrotechnics. He was a member of the team selected by Vikram Sarabhai to design the first Indian satellite launch vehicle, which was composed of Kurup, Vasant Gowarikar, A. E. Muthunayagam and

Udupi Ramachandra Rao Udupi Ramachandra Rao (10 March 1932 – 24 July 2017) was an Indian space scientist and former chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation. He was also the Chairman of the Governing Council of the Physical Research Laboratory at Ahm ...

among others. He was the Design Project Leader of the second stage and was closely associated with the project till the launch of the vehicle on 10 August 1979. Later, he moved to Satish Dhawan Space Centre in

Sriharikota Sriharikota is a Barrier island off the Bay of Bengal coast located in the Shar Project settlement of Tirupati district in Andhra Pradesh, India. It houses the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, one of the two satellite launch centres in India (the o ...

Andhra Pradesh Andhra Pradesh (, abbr. AP) is a state in the south-eastern coastal region of India. It is the seventh-largest state by area covering an area of and tenth-most populous state with 49,386,799 inhabitants. It is bordered by Telangana to the ...

, established a similar plant in the 1970s and superannuated from service as the director of the SHAR centre. The Government of India included him in the 1990 Republic Day honours list for the civilian award of the

. The Indian Society for Non-Destructive Testing has instituted an annual lecture, the M. R. Kurup Memorial Lecture, in his honour.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kurup, M. R. Recipients of the Padma Shri in science & engineering Year of birth missing Year of death missing People from Alappuzha district Malayali people Scientists from Kerala Indian space scientists Indian Space Research Organisation people Engineers from Kerala 20th-century Indian engineers Indian chemical engineers

Biography

See also

References