The Bombay Technologist 3 | The Bombay Technologist 2019 , 66 (1) ARTICLE An Interview with Prof. Man Mohan Sharma Shashwat Kulkarni a , Devavrat Sathe, a Ameya Chaudhari, a Durva Naik, a, * a Institute of Chemical Technology, Nathalal Parekh Road, Matunga, Mumbai-400019, India. Corresponding author: Durva Naik (durvanaikict@gmail.com) About Prof. M. M. Sharma: Man Mohan Sharma, FREng (born May 1, 1937 in Jodhpur, Rajasthan) is an Indian chemical engineer. He was educated at Jodhpur, Mumbai and Cambridge. He obtained the Bachelor of Chemical Engineering (1958) from UDCT (ICT) and subsequently M.Sc. (Tech.) in 1960. He completed his Ph.D. (Chemical Engineering) (1964) at the University of Cambridge with P.V. Danckwerts. In 1964, he returned to India, aged 27, as Professor at the University of Bombay, and later became the Director of the University Department of Chemical Technology (UDCT), now ICT (Institute of Chemical Technology - A Deemed University) – the first chemical engineering professor from ICT to do so. He remained Director, UICT for 33 years. He has been honored by several universities (including the IITs) by honorary doctorates. In 1990, he became the first Indian engineer to be elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society, UK. He was awarded the Padma Bhushan (1987) and then the Padma Vibhushan (2001) by the President of India. He has also been awarded the Leverhulme Medal of the Royal Society, the S.S. Bhatnagar Prize in the Engineering Sciences (1973), FICCI Award (1981), the Vishwakarma Medal of the Indian National Science Academy (1985), G.M. Modi Award (1991), Meghnad Saha Medal (1994), and an honorary Doctor of Science degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi (2001). Professor Sharma is a recipient of a number of prestigious academic honours and awards. He is a Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore, Honorary Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences (India), Allahabad, Fellow of the Royal Society, London. He was elected Honorary Fellow by the Royal Academy of Engineering and is also a Foreign Associate of the US National Academy of Engineering. 1. Prof. Sharma, your first paper was published in the Bombay Technologist. Please share your experiences during your time in BT. Yes. This must be in 1956-57. I still remember the title – ‘Concept of partition function waves: A study related to thermodynamics.’ It was an exciting experience to write articles as a young student. As a matter of fact, I encourage all my research students to write a state-of-the-art research article and get their papers published in some local journal to give them a feeling of achievement in the art of writing and to help them financially. Writing articles inculcates in you the art of writing and when you become a research student and you write some state-of-the-art report on an upcoming area, it throws new challenges at you. As an undergraduate student, it is more like training you for the seminars and research projects you will be facing in the final year. 2. How did you proceed with your paper in BT? Who or what inspired you? It’s a funny story. Since you asked me, there was a teacher who taught physical chemistry whom I had shown the manuscript that I had written. He insisted on putting his name as a co-author on the manuscript, which made me ineligible for an award even though his contribution was zero. 3. From physical chemistry to chemical engineering, how did you cope with this transition? What were the different phases of your academic life? We used to have extraordinary job offers. It was a big bragging point since we would have jobs in our hands before graduating. People would not believe this as it was difficult to