RY Deshpande

Born in 1931 RY Deshpande did his science studies from Osmania University, Hyderabad, India, and joined as a research physicist at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai in 1955. Later he worked at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, Berkeley, California USA, and the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Mumbai. While at BARC he headed several Atomic Energy and Space Projects in Advance Technology. He has some fifty research papers published in national and international scientific journals. He was also an examiner for a number of PhD theses in the field of Solid State Physics. In 1981 Deshpande joined Sri Aurobindo Ashram Pondicherry where he taught physics and a few other subjects such as Astrophysics, Savitri, The Future Poetry, Science and Society for thirty years. During the same period he was for eight years the Editor of Mother India, a Monthly Review of Culture, published by the Ashram. During 2007-2008 Deshpande was a senior editor of Science-Culture-Integral Yoga Web-Magazine, SCIY founded in Los Angeles. Presently he runs two websites devoted specifically to Sri Aurobindo's epic Savitri and cultural matters of national and international interest. He gave on different fora, including Radio and TV, interviews, talks and seminars dealing with social, spiritual, scientific and literary aspects. Deshpande's literary activities include writing poetry, essays, articles, book reviews, comments which have been published in a few cultural periodicals. He is a published author of some two dozen books of poetry, literary criticism, Aurobindonian philosophy and culture, two reflective books on science and related social matters. He would however now like to focus his attention mainly on Savitri in its several creative dimensions. It is believed that his full series of talks on Savitri will be an enduring major contribution in this field.