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Pisharoth Rama Pisharoty (10 February 1909 – 24 September 2002) was an Indianphysicist andmeteorologist, and is considered to be the father ofremote sensing in India.
P. R. Pisharoty was born on 10 February 1909 in the town ofKollengode in the Indian state ofKerala. His parents were Sivaramakrishnan alias Gopala Vadhyar and Lakshmi Pisharassiar. He had three brothers: Chakrapani, Balakrishnan and Rajagopal, and three half brothers: Vaidyanathan, Rose Vadhyar and Gopalakrishnan. He completed his early education in Kerala. Having done his Physics BA honours fromSt. Joseph's College,Trichinopoly,Madras state, he went on to do his MA (Physics) fromMadras University. He then worked as a college lecturer in Physics at Loyola College at Chennai during 1932-1941. During the summer vacations he used to work under Prof.C. V. Raman at theIndian Institute of Science,Bangalore. On the recommendation of Raman, Pisharoty joined theIndia Meteorological Department in 1942, where he carried out research on thunderstorms, western disturbances, movement of monsoon depressions, orographic rain, etc. He then joined theUniversity of California for further studies where he worked under meteorologistJacob Bjerknes. His published two reports titledSome aspects of geostrophic poleward sensible heat andThe kinetic energy of the atmosphere. He obtained his MS (in Meteorology) and PhD degrees by 1954.
On returning to India, Pisharoty became the Director of Colaba and Alibag Magnetic Observatories in 1959 and Founder Director of theIndian Institute of Tropical Meteorology,Pune in 1962. In 1967 he retired as Director of the Institute of Tropical Meteorology and joined thePhysical Research Laboratory,Ahmedabad as a senior professor at the invitation ofVikram Sarabhai. At this point he was entrusted with the job of introducing remote sensing technology to India. He accepted the job. His pioneering experiment of detection ofcoconut wilt-root disease using Soviet aircraft and US equipment was considered to be the first success in remote sensing in India.
Pisharoty served as the Director, Remote Sensing and Satellite Meteorology, atISROSpace Applications Centre, Ahmedabad during 1972-75. He was a Member of the Scientific Advisory Board ofWorld Meteorological Organization from 1963 to 1968 and later its Chairman. He also served as the Vice-President of theInternational Association of Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences, and as a member of Joint Organising Committee forGlobal Atmospheric Research Programme from 1969 to 1977. He worked at PRL until the early nineties when he retired for health reasons.
Pisharoty died on the morning of 24 September 2002 atPune, at the age of 93. TheIndian Society of Remote Sensing renamed the Indian National Remote Sensing Award to 'P. R. Pisharoty Memorial Award' in his memory.The GPSRadiosonde of ISRO's VSSC is named after Pisharoty.[3]
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