Chetput Venkatasubban Seshadri was born on Tamil New Year Day (14th April) in 1930 in Tuticorin in South India. He did his schooling in many towns and cities of India and received his Honors Degree in Chemistry from the University of Madras (1950), followed a Bachelor degree in chemical engineering from the University of Bombay (University Department of Chemical Technology)in 1953. He did his doctoral work at the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) followed by post-doctoral work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, USA. After his return to India in 1961, Dr Seshadri served on the faculty of chemical engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras (IITM) and at the AC College of Technology at the University of Madras before joining the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur (IITK). He served in various capacities at IITK becoming the head of the Department of Chemical Engineering and served as a member of the management when he became the Dean of Student’s Affairs. He left the academia in 1974 and moved to the industry when he became the chief executive of Kasturi Papers and Boards in Mysore (now Maisuru) to establish India’s first fodder yeast plant. He then moved to Madras (now Chennai) to found the Sri AMM Murugappa Chettiar Research Center (MCRC) in 1977 and continued as its director till his retirement in 1995.
Recognition in academic institutions: Endowment at AU-KBC Research Centre, Anna University; chair at IITK; and lecture series in IITB.
Work as a teacher: CVS was a highly-regarded teacher in chemical engineering. He co-authored a textbook (with S V Patankar) called “Elements of Fluid Mechanics” (1971) that remained popular for many years. He also innovated in teaching by offering flexible tests and examinations at IITK. (Details published as a paper in the Journal of Chemical Education, 1969).
CVS work at MCRC: It was highly diverse. It would not be easy to place such a wide range into small number of specific categories for the sake of simplicity in description and analysis. A number of detailed studies have been published and these relate to the implications of CVS’s work or the roots and sources of his inspiration. (These publications will be made available on this site).
Innovations in technology design and development:
CVS was one of the very few researchers in the pre-Venture Capitalist era who built a complete chain from the concept to the product-on-the-shelf. An exemplar is his work in algae for nutrition. He identified Spirulina fusiformis as the most suitable species for development as a nutritional supplement. This was isolated as a pure culture in the late ‘70s and was fully characterized. Two papers in peer-reviewed research journals appeared as a consequence. During 1980-1986, a large number of laboratory trials for mass culture were carried out and a number of steps in production technology were finalized. In 1986, large-scale production of Spirulina was launched and the product received the necessary regulatory approvals and reached the market in the late ‘80s. The links in this complex chain are intricate and require extensive involvement of highly trained biologists and technologists who are specialists in process design and development. The regulatory process for approvals is a formidable one and operates at the national level. CVS’ leadership in this is further evident from the collaborative study he carried out with the National Institute of Nutrition which decisively showed that Spirulina can be an effective nutritional supplement for rural families. CVS was able demonstrate that a modestly-endowed effort can reach the people faster than a much better-endowed one that targeted the markets. We would note that this was also the time when a well-coordinated effort was under way in a national laboratory, focused on production of single-cell protein from algae in collaboration with a research group in (West) Germany.
Another example of such a value-chain can be found in CVS work on use of high-density polyethylene (HDPE) for building kattumaram (craft for artisanal fishers) and in the development of fish-aggregation devices which were also built using HDPE.
Work on renewable sources of energy:
CVS was a pioneer in harnessing wind and solar energies for rural areas. He brought his extensive knowledge of fluid systems to design new type of windmills that were easy to construct and erect in rural areas without requiring highly-skilled technicians. These windmills were also affordable as well as easy to maintain. A number of them were deployed in rural parts of a few coastal districts of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. These windmills were designed for the purpose of pumping water. CVS developed a number of solar devices. They were designed for purposes such as drying fish (for example in rural coastal communities) or to convert brackish water into potable water. CVS also conceptualized and implemented shelter belts that used multiple lines of trees to prevent soil erosion caused by winds in semi-arid areas. In this effort he was able to bring his work in wind energy and social forestry together.
Work on bioconversion:
This was one more of pioneering effort by CVS that brought his knowledge of microbial technology to bear on problems that affect rural areas. Initial efforts focused on design of improved digesters for biogas from cattle dung. This effort was later transformed into one that involved a close study of microbial eco-physiology of biogas production and effecting suitable alterations for increasing the proportion of methane produced. CVS showed through such efforts that cellulose, a polymer of glucose, need not always be converted into glucose before conversion into other compounds and that an alternative pathway was possible. CVS also investigated phototrophic production of hydrogen besides hydrogen production by microbial fermentation from wastes (such as distillery waste) and from substances such as silk cotton.
Search for new energy quality markers:
CVS initiated work on recovery of energy rejected as waste or other forms of degraded energy years before he founded MCRC. He was intrigued by the observation that in any process, both energy and mass are ingested; however, mass was always fully recovered while energy was not. This led him to investigate in depth the notions of mass, energy, time and information. In a series of three publications that appeared during 1977-1982, CVS proposed the need for a new type of mass-energy equivalence in macroscopic thermodynamics. He also was one of the first researchers globally to question the quality-ranking of various sources of energy based on the assumption that work or motion was the highest quality form of energy. He came up with a new parameter called Shakti श that was a general, linear function of mass, energy and information. Calculations of efficiency in conversion, CVS proposed, should be based on श rather than on entropy, to avoid a number of anomalies that are known in thermodynamics. CVS carried out a comprehensive analysis of energy in Indian agriculture and showed that a significant proportion of energy in India was used for production of food and to cook the food so produced.
Work on foundational issues in sciences:
CVS was probably the first in a few generations of scientists who pointed out the enduring influence of Judeo-Christian ideas in concepts of space, linear time and in ideas such as the heat death of the universe. He also pointed out the biases in notions such as energy-quality that linked directly to economic exploitation. He therefore proposed that biases of one type could be replaced by preferences of another type. Thus, new energy-quality markers that were based on process of food ingestion and absorption could become the basis for calculations of energy conversion efficiencies, rather than industrial processes of high-rate combustion requiring high temperatures.
Traditional sciences and technologies of India:
CVS became chairman of the PPST trust in 1990 and served as the general chair of two Congresses of Traditional Sciences and Technologies of India (1991 and 1993).
4th C V Seshadri Endowment Oration on 20th November 2025