Anyone having an opportunity to study the life of Dr. Dilip Das of Bedford, Massachusetts will certainly marvel at the scintillating life led by this nonagenarian member of the Assamese Diaspora in the USA. Dr. Das treaded the soil of this foreign land with adventure when there was hardly any support from any other Assamese immigrants. In fact, he served in the US army during the World War II. Dr. Das, son of Sri Uttam Chandra and Padmaboti Das of Goalpara, was born and raised in Guwahati where he matriculated from Cotton Collegiate School in 1931. Following that, he spent four years at Cotton College, Guwahati and obtained a B.Sc degree in Physics, Chemistry and Honors Mathematics. He was awarded the Rajani Kanta Barat Gold medal for scoring the highest mark in Honors Math in Assam. He then set sails for the USA for higher studies and obtained a BS degree in Metallurgical Engineering in 1939. With the gathering storms of World War II blowing strongly at about that time, it was too risky for him to travel back to India by sea. Therefore, he stayed back to work on various jobs in Montana and Washington until 1943 when he was drafted into the U.S. Army. In 1944, he was shipped out for overseas military duty in India and was glad to be serving throughout Assam and Calcutta. While in Calcutta, Dr. Das had the pleasure of meeting Maya, the daughter of Sri Jadav Prasad and Debabala Chaliha and niece of Sri Bimala Prasad Chaliha, ex-Chief Minister of Assam, and after a brief courtship, married her in September, 1945 in a Hindu wedding ceremony at the bride’s parental home in Calcutta. The couple then had to go through a second official wedding in 1946 in the US Army Chapel in Calcutta for the bride to qualify for an invitation by the U.S. Armed services in India to accompany Dr. Das to the U.S.A. Shortly thereafter, they boarded a troop carrying ship in Calcutta bound for San Francisco. Soon after his arrival in San Francisco, Dr. Das received his honorable discharge from the Army and decided to go back to Montana. He resumed his studies at the Montana School of Mines and obtained his Master’s degree in Physical Metallurgy in 1947. In 1950 , Dr. Das started research under a research fellowship at the University of Notre Dame in pursuit of a Doctorate degree in Materials Science and successfully completed all the requirements in 1953 and joined the U.S. Na-val Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C. Dr. Das started a new position as a senior scientist at Raytheon Company in Waltham,MA in April, 1954.
For the next twenty years, until his retirement in 1984, Dr. Das had a very fruitful and challenging career in a number of areas of materials science. From early 1976 to late 1983, Dr Das worked as a senior staff scientist at the famous Draper Laboratory-an offshoot of M.I.T. specializing in Inertial Guidance Systems- and stayed on as a consultant after retirement until 1985 when he decided to end his professional career. During the course of some thirty years, Dr. Das published numerous scientific papers and accomplished two very significant developments which highlighted his journey through his scientific career. Each of these was awarded the recognition as one of 100 most significant scientific/ engineering developments of the year by Industrial Research Magazine. They are as follows:
1. Development of ductile-Niobium Tin Super conductors -IR-100 in 1963
2. Development of the process for producing the most powerful permanent magnet ever produced in the world using an intermetallic compound of elements Samarium and Cobalt I- IR- 100 in 1967.
Dr. Das has been blessed with a long and happy married life. His wife, Maya (Lakhimi) was raised in a tea garden near Sibsagar, Assam until she was eight years old. She then went to live with her maternal grandparents Sri Bishnu Prasad and Sabitri Duara in Guwahati and enrolled in Panbazar Girls’ High School. She passed matriculation with letters of distinction in Geography and Assamese. She then joined Benares Hindu University, but due to the unstable situation as a result of Gandhiji’s Quit India movement of 1942, she transferred to Ashutosh College in Calcutta. She graduated with a B.A. degree in Economics. During this time, Sri Jyoti Prasad Agarwalla, a tireless freedom fighter and the doyen of Assamese music stayed at their house during his visits to Calcutta and taught her songs to sing in the newly launched Assamese program in All India Radio, Calcutta.
Maya got married to Dr. Das while in U.S. service in Calcutta and accompanied him to the USA as his life long partner. At about the time Dr. Das obtained his MS degree in 1947, their daughter Naomi was born. A few days after Dr. Das joined the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in 1953, their son-Philip was born. In 1960, Maya received M.Ed degree from Boston University and secured a teaching job in the Reading, MA public schools. She retired in 1989.
Both the children of Dr. & Mrs. Das are very successful in their own careers and lives. Their daughter Naomi Das is a Pediatric Endocrinologist and has authored books on childhood obesity and has a program called KidShape for overweight children. Naomi’s husband, Timothy Neufeld, is a lawyer. They have two daughters, Pamela and Kathy. Pamela is following her father’s career as a lawyer and Kathy is in investment banking.
Their son, Philip, is an anesthesiologist. Philip’s wife, Cindy, is a registered nurse. Their children are Katie, Courtney and Jeffrey. Katie and Courtney are graduate students. Jeffrey is playing in the International Tennis Federation Tournament this year. He hopes to become a professional tennis player. Both Naomi and Philip live in Southern California.
Dr. Dilip and Maya Das have been guests at gatherings of the Assam Society of America several times, typically with a camera in Dr. Das’s hand. Together, they share an imitable lust for life that is apparent in their style.
Above all, this adorable couple is humble and humane.
- by Umesh Tahbildar, West Windsor, NJ
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