Prof. Ramchandra Rao Dasari was born in India in Krishna District of Andhra Pradesh. He received his education in India - BSc in 1954 from Andhra University, MSc in 1956 from Banaras Hindu University and PhD in 1960 from Aligarh Muslim University. He joined the Department of Physics at IIT Kanpur in 1962 and became a full-professor in 1973. During this period, he spent two years at MIT as a visiting scientist and gained valuable experience in the fabrication of lasers and research in laser physics. Prof. Dasari's major accomplishments at IIT Kanpur include building one of the largest Laser laboratories for university research in India, training large numbers of PhD students in laser research and interactions with R&D laboratories such as Central Electronics Ltd., New Delhi, and Bharat Heavy Electronics, Hyderabad for laser technology based instrumentation. As Physics panel member of UGC, he took new initiatives for improvements in undergraduate education and organized workshops for training teachers. Besides laser fabrication, he also worked in high-resolution spectroscopy of simple molecules, vibrational-rotational relaxations in infrared and laser spectroscopy of rare-earth ions in single crystals.