Lal Chand Verman

Lal Chand Verman (3 September 1902 – 21 October 1979) was an Indian physicist and a pioneer in industrial standardization. He served as the first Director-General of the Indian Standards Institution and was instrumental in establishing the framework for standardization in India.

Early life and education Lal Chand Verman was born on 3 September 1902 in Amritsar, Punjab. He earned a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering with Honours from the University of Michigan in 1927. In 1926, he was elected as a member of the Tau Beta Pi, a scholastic engineering fraternity. He then attended Cornell University, where he conducted research on ionospheric phenomena and radio wave propagation, obtaining his Master of Science in 1928 and Ph.D. in 1930.

Career

Early career In 1931–1933, Verman served as a Research Fellow at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. He then worked at the Shellac Research Institute in Teddington, Middlesex, from 1933 to 1935. In 1936, Verman was appointed Research Officer at the Industrial Intelligence and Research Bureau of the Indian Stores Department. With the establishment of the Board of Scientific and Industrial Research (BSIR) in 1940, which later evolved into the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research in 1942, the Research Bureau was integrated into the Board.

Indian Standards Institution On 3 September 1946, the Interim Government of India passed its first resolution establishing the Indian Standards Institution as the National Standards Body. One of its objectives was to recommend national standards for measurements. In June 1947, Verman was appointed Director of the Indian Standards Institution. He later became its Director-General, a role he held until 1966. Subsequently, he worked as a Senior Regional Adviser on Industrial Standardization for the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Far East (EGAFE) in Bangkok from 1967 to 1970. President of the Indian Science Congress (1969–1970). President of the Institution of Telecommunications Engineers for two consecutive terms (1960–1962). Fellow of the Institution of Physics (India). Fellow of the Indian National Science Academy (1946). Standardization: A New Discipline (1973) National Standardization in Developing Countries: Organization and Administration Manual (UNIDO, 1974)

He has about 20 patents in areas including automatic voltage regulators and plastics molding techniques. Leo B. Moore Prize by the Standards Engineers' Society, USA (1964). Sir Walter Puckey Prize by the Institution of Production Engineers, UK (1967). Standards Personality of the Month by the American National Standards Institute in 1966. In his honor, the Institution of Electronics and Telecommunication Engineers (IETE) instituted the Lal C. Verman Award in 1983, recognizing excellence in standardization and quality control.