Professor K. R. Rajagopal passed away

Born on November 24, 1950, in Delhi, India, he started his career at the Indian Institute of Technology. He received his master’s degree from the Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, United States of America, and his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, United States of America, in 1978. Later he served as a Distinguished Professor at Texas A&M University, where he held the Forsyth Chair in Mechanical Engineering. Additionally, he held joint appointments in the Departments of Mathematics, Biomedical Engineering, Chemical engineering and Civil Engineering, and was a Senior Research Scientist at the Texas Transportation Institute. He was a prominent figure in the great lineage of „rational mechanics“ school conceived by Professor Clifford Ambrose Truesdell. Professor Rajagopal was one of the few scientists who regularly published seminal papers in applied mathematics, fluid mechanics, solid mechanics, and engineering as well.

In December 1992, Professor Rajagopal accepted the invitation to give a lecture series at the winter school organized by Professor Jindřich Nečas and his coworkers from the Mathematical Institute of Charles University, and he remained connected to the Czech continuum mechanics/applied mathematics community hereafter. His influence was substantial in shaping research activities at the Institute – the theory of partial differential equations governing the motion of non-Newtonian fluids and nonlinear solids became a central point of interest at the Institute. Many then-students who are now senior researchers at the Mathematical Institute, had visited him, had worked with him, and were mentored by him at the Texas A&M University, where they had a chance to experience his passion for science as well as hospitality of his household and his wife Chandrika Rajagopal. His broad collaboration with the Czech mathematical and engineering community school is illustrated by the nearly eighty joint papers he wrote with 27 Czech co-authors, ten of whom are employees of Charles University. In recognition of his profound influence on the Charles University continuum mechanics/applied mathematics community he received an honorary doctorate from Charles University on April 4, 2012.

We believe that Professor Rajagopal's passion for science will forever inspire us and that, following his favorite imperative, „Each tomorrow will find us farther than today“.

Josef Málek and Vít Průša
MÚ UK, MFF UK