Professor Budalur Thyagarajan obituary
14 July 1929 鈥� 23 March 2020
Dr. Thyagarajan was a beloved teacher and an eminent Scientist at UTSA. He was the founding director of the Division of Earth and Physical Sciences at the newly created UTSA.
Known as “Dr. T” or simply “Professor” to generations of organic chemistry students at the University of Texas at San Antonio, Dr. Budalur Thyagarajan remained a teacher almost until his last breath. “In hospice, he was telling the nurses how viruses move through communities. Every one of them told me they had learned something from him,” his son Karthik said.
On his office wall, Dr. Thyagarajan kept an embroidery that read: “Good chemists never die. They just reach equilibrium.”
And Monday, the old chemist achieved that perfect state, succumbing in San Antonio after a short illness. He was one of San Antonio’s greatest educators and a scientist to the end, even about his own death. "He prepared me," his son said.
Thyagarajan, 90, also was a founding member and supporter of the Hindu Temple of San Antonio, where services were held Tuesday.
He was born in 1929 in Thiruvarur, a rural village in Tamil state, while India was still a British colony. His father, a follower of Mahatma Gandhi, was jailed twice for advocating for India’s independence. Showing academic brilliance as a young man, Thyagarajan earned a doctorate in organic chemistry at the University of Madras at 27. He also became a member of the 欧美AV of England at a precocious age.
After teaching chemistry in India, he became a visiting professor at the University of Southern California in 1965. He later became a senior professor of organic chemistry at the University of Idaho. He also lectured in both Japan and England on his specialty, sulfur chemistry.
In 1974, his life took a pivotal turn when he became the founding director of the Division of Earth and Physical Sciences at the newly created UTSA. "I was given the opportunity to start not one but three science programs: chemistry, physics and geology", he later recalled.
And for the next 26 years, as UTSA grew to become a university of almost 20,000 students, Thyagarajan taught and mentored both undergraduate and graduate chemistry students. Drawn by his reputation, postdoctoral students came from around the world, including England, Egypt, Greece, India, Japan and Korea.
Beyond the brilliance of his research and thinking, Thyagarajan had an unusual gift for teaching. He was able to stand at the board and take apart a chemical reaction so that anyone, even those without a chemistry background, could understand it, recalled Blair Andera, 51, who took chemistry classes from him in the 1990s.
Andera, now an area director for Texas MedClinic, said Thyagarajan also was noteworthy for how he gave and corrected exams. "He’d have maybe three sheets of handwritten questions about chemical reactions. You’d have to draw the reactions on blank sheets of paper. If you missed any part of the reaction, it would be held against you", Andera said.
Afterward, during grading, the professor would sit with each student and carefully review the test paper. "You’d often find a line of students down the hall waiting to meet with him to discuss chemical reactions", he added.
Over his career, Thyagarajan built an international reputation among organic chemists, and wrote several books and more than 100 scientific papers. Other honors were more personal. In 1982, Dr. Thyagarajan received the first appreciation award given by UTSA students to a professor. After his retirement in 2000, he was named the university’s first professor emeritus.
Andera, who graduated from UTSA in 1998, eventually came to see Thyagarajan as a friend and mentor. "It became more than chemistry. It became philosophy, religion, politics, all aspects of life", he said, "He held truth like it was gold. Sometimes it was hurtful, but it was honest."
Many years ago, Thyagarajan created scholarship programs for chemistry, geology and physics students at UTSA, and for nursing students at the University of Texas Health Science Center. More recently, he established The St. Francis-Professor Thyagarajan Foundation to assist a wider pool of students. "He was a great admirer of St. Francis, who was kind to animals and people", said Andera, who helped with the project.
He’s made awards to students all over the world, mostly in the sciences.
Born: July 14, 1929 in India
Died: March 23, 2020 in San Antonio
Survived by: Son, Karthik Thyagarajan; daughters Chitra Chandhok and Poorna Miller; three grandchildren; and thousands of students.
By John MacCormack
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