Satish Ramnath Shetye

Satish Ramnath Shetye (born 1950) is an Indian geophysicist, oceanographer and a former vice chancellor of the University of Goa. He is a former director of the National Institute of Oceanography (NIO) and is known for his research on the monsoon-driven currents along the Indian coast. He is an elected fellow of all the three major Indian science academies viz. Indian National Science Academy, Indian Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Sciences, India as well as the Indian Geophysical Union. 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 Earth, Atmosphere, Ocean and Planetary Sciences in 1992.

Biography

Satish Ramnath Shetye, born on 25 October 1950 in the Indian state of Goa, did his master's degree in physics from the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai in 1973 and moved to the US to secure a PhD in Physical Oceanography from the University of Washington in 1982. He continued in the US to complete his post-doctoral work at the same university during 1975–82 and returned to India to join the National Institute of Oceanography (NIO) in 1982 as a research associate. He retired from service in 2016, succeeded by Varun Sahni.

Legacy Shetye's researches cover the physical oceanography of the Arabian Sea, Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean and he is known to have undertaken several ocean expeditions in the Indian coastal waters for his studies. He elucidated annual variations in the sea surface temperature in the Arabian Sea by developing a mixed-layer model, reportedly for the first time. His other studies included the coastal circulation of the entire North Indian Ocean, especially around India, the thermal fields in the North Indian Ocean and their relationship with the Indian summer monsoon, variability of sea levels along Indian coasts, dynamics of Indian estuaries and a first-time study of the hydrology of rivers feeding those estuaries. ResearchGate, an online repository of scientific articles, has listed 95 of them.

Shetye has been associated with the Earth Commission, a body constituted by the Ministry of Earth Sciences for policy formulations, and their implementation, where he sat during 2007–09. He has delivered several featured lectures and plenary addresses which include the IX Kumari L. A. Meera Memorial Lecture of 2000.

Awards and honors The Indian Academy of Sciences chose Shetye as a Young Associate in 1984; the academy would honor him again with an elected fellowship in 1992. The Indian National Science Academy and the Indian Geophysical Union

Selected bibliography