Happiness at Lake Constance

There is nothing to remind one of the sunlight glistening on Lake Constance in the summer as Dr. Mohan Muralikrishna Garlapati arrives at the Münster Schloss one cold November afternoon to talk about his career and about the 73rd Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting he attended in July. The Schloss is shrouded in fog, but despite this, materials physicist Garlapati is in a good mood. He has been looking forward to our conversation and has brought some good news: “I’ve been offered a position as professor at the Indian Institute of Technology Patna, which I shall soon be taking up,” he says.

What is good news for the 30-year-old Garlapati is not necessarily good news for the University of Münster, which will be losing a gifted and ambitious scientist. Although the promotion represents the highest recognition for his achievements, he is quick to point out the importance of Münster University for him. “It made me the scientist and researcher that I am today – and I’m very grateful both to the University and to the Institute of Materials Physics for allowing me to work here and advance my development for several years in a highly professional environment,” he says. At the Nobel Laureate Meeting, Garlapati also emphasised the role played by Münster when he declared that the University had made this “greatest moment of happiness in my career” possible.

The path from an Indian village to the meeting with Nobel laureates was long. Mohan Garlapati embarked on it from an early age, and always with a huge interest in nature and the science behind it, as well as in inventions and in technological and human progress. The physicist covered part of the way as a DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) and Humboldt Fellow and as a research group leader at the University of Münster, where he produced and analysed synthetic materials in the Radiotracer Lab – the “only one of its kind in the world”, as he says. For Garlapati, along with humility, curiosity has also gone hand in hand with ambition and self-discipline. “There were times,” he says, “when I was too ambitious – and perhaps I still am today. During my doctoral studies, my father passed away, and because of my work I missed out on enjoying many precious moments with him.” He has since realised that it is important to spend time enjoying your private life too alongside your work.

His ambition, curiosity and perseverance took him to Lindau, where he and over 630 other junior researchers from 90 countries had been invited to meet with almost 40 Nobel laureates in order to learn from them, as well as from one another. On the recommendation of Prof. Gerhard Wilde, the Dean had put Garlapati’s name forward to the selection committee, and they subsequently invited him to attend.

“The first impression itself is the best one,” he says, as he speaks about his five-day stay in Lindau and describes the evening reception to welcome everyone. “I felt these vibes, this enormous motivation in me and all around me as I was surrounded by more than a dozen Nobel laureates as well as by members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.” In the conversations he had, he noticed that these luminaries were themselves also human beings – but distinguished by two things in particular: consistency and perseverance. One Nobel laureate told him, Garlapati recounts, that he had been nominated for the prize 22 times before he was finally awarded it at his advanced age. Despite this greatest of all awards, he said, he and his wife remember above all the many years of hard work and the financial difficulties they had before he received the prize. “That was something that inspired me greatly,” Garlapati says.

He will take this inspiration back to India to start his work as a professor, fulfilling his “social responsibility towards humanity and the environment,” which he says he has as a scientist. “I see this as an encouragement and will continue trying to achieve something in life,” says 30-year-old Garlapati – as someone who has met Nobel laureates, conducted hundreds of experiments at Münster, published more than two dozen papers, registered patents and who will soon have fulfilled his lifelong (professional) dream. But while he is happy about these achievements, Garlapati remembers the enormous support and encouragement provided by his wife Sai Meghana and mother Lakshmi, acting as the backbone for his success.

André Bednarz

This article is from the brochure "Twelve months, twelve people", published in February 2025.

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