Koneru Ramakrishna Rao
Indian philosopher, parapsychologist, vice-chancellor
Koneru Ramakrishna Rao (4 October 1932 – 9 November 2021) was an Indian philosopher who served as Chancellor of GITAM (Deemed To Be University), and as Chairman of GITAM school of Gandhian Studies, psychologist, parapsychologist, educationist, teacher, researcher and administrator. The Government of India awarded him the civilian honour of Padma Shri in 2011.
Biography
Rao was born on 4 October 1932, in the Delta region of Coastal Andhra, Madras Presidency, India. He did his college and graduate work at Andhra University, Waltair, India (B.A. hons., philosophy 1953; M.A. hons., psychology 1955; PhD, 1962). He was a lecturer in the Departments of Philosophy and Psychology at Andhra University from 1953 to 1958 under the tutelage of professors Saileswar Sen and Satchidananda Murthy. He left in 1958 to come to the United States as a Fulbright scholar. His stay at the University of Chicago was extended a year with a Rockefeller Fellowship with Richard McKeon at the University of Chicago and received PhD and D.Litt. degrees. He returned to India in 1960 as chief librarian at Andhra University (1960–61), but then moved to North Carolina to work with J. B. Rhine at the Parapsychology Laboratory at Duke University, North Carolina and later headed his Foundation for Research on the Nature of Man as its executive director.
He returned to Andhra University in the mid-1960s and in 1967 established the Department of Parapsychology, the only such university department of its kind in the world.
“Koneru Ramakrishna Rao” enters the record as indian philosopher, parapsychologist, vice-chancellor. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Koneru, Ramakrishna and Indian can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6429084. VIAF identifies the subject as 66481864. The Library of Congress control number is n82120528. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1932, 2021, 2011 and 1953.
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This entry incorporates text from “Koneru Ramakrishna Rao” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.