Muthusamy Lakshmanan (born 25 March 1946) is an Indian theoretical physicist currently working as Professor of Eminence at the Department of Nonlinear Dynamics of Bharathidasan University. Presently he is the DST-SERB National Science Chair awarded by the Science and Engineering Research Board, Department of Science and Technology. He has held several research fellowships which included Raja Ramanna fellowship of the Department of Atomic Energy, Alexander von Humboldt fellowship, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science fellowship, Royal Society Nuffield Foundation fellowship, and NASI-Senior Scientist Platinum Jubilee Fellowship. In the year 2021, on August 15, he was conferred with the Dr. A. P. J Abdul Kalam Award by the Government of Tamil Nadu.
Known for his research on nonlinear dynamics and for the development of Murali-Lakshmanan-Chua (MLC) Circuit, Lakshmanan is an elected fellow of all three major Indian science academies – Indian Academy of Sciences, Indian National Science Academy and National Academy of Sciences, India – as well as of The World Academy of Sciences. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, one of the highest Indian science awards, for his contributions to physical sciences in 1989.[1][note 1]
Muthusamy Lakshmanan was born on 25 March 1946 in Pollachi, in the Coimbatore district of the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu. He graduated in science from NGM College in Pollachi in 1966 and earned his master's degree in physics (MSc) at Madras Christian College of the University of Madras in 1969.[2] His post-MSc studies in theoretical physics were also at the University of Madras, completed with a first rank in 1970. He joined the university as a research assistant the same year.[3] Simultaneously, he pursued his doctoral studies, supervised by P. M. Mathews,[4] to secure a PhD in nonlinear dynamics in 1974.[4]
Taking a sabbatical from university service, he did his post-doctoral studies first at the University of Tübingen as an Alexander von Humboldt fellow during 1976–77, and then at the Eindhoven University of Technology from 1977 to 1978.[5] On his return to India, he rejoined University of Madras at their Post-Graduate Centre at Tiruchirapalli as a reader of physics, and held this post until 1982 when he moved to the physics department of Bharathidasan University as a reader. He was promoted as a professor[6] in 1984, after which he headed the department of physics (1994–2006) as well as the Centre for Nonlinear Dynamics (CNLD) (1992–2006).[7] In between, he served as an honorary professor at S.N. Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences from 1989 to 1994.[8]