Dr. Mohan Satish Kalelkar

Piscataway, NJ

Dr. Mohan Kalelkar, 71, passed away at his home in Piscataway, NJ on November 22, 2019. He was born on April 24, 1948 in Bombay (now Mumbai), India. Mohan was the youngest of three children to freedom fighter Satish Kalelkar and Chandan Parekh and grandson of freedom fighter and renowned litterateur Acharya Kakasaheb Kalelkar.

He came to the U.S. at the age of 12, and attended Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School in Bethesda, MD, graduating in 1964. He got a Bachelor's Degree at Harvard College in 1968, and a PhD at Columbia University in 1974.

He remained at Columbia for four years as a Postdoctoral Research Associate, then in 1978 came to Rutgers University as an Assistant Professor. He was subsequently promoted to Associate Professor and then Full Professor. He served as the Physics Undergraduate Program Director from 1998 until his retirement in 2013. He received many awards for teaching, including the university's highest award for teaching excellence in 2006. In 2013 he established the Mohan S. Kalelkar Award for Outstanding Academic Excellence by women physics majors.

His entire research career was in experimental elementary particle physics. His last experiment was at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) to make precision tests of the Standard Model by studying the interactions of high-energy polarized electrons with antielectrons, collaborating with hundreds of physicists from 33 institutions around the world.

Mohan was predeceased by his brother Ashok Kalelkar. He leaves behind his doting elder sister Shailaja Kalelkar who lives in India with her husband Sukumar Parikh and their children Milind Parikh, Meghana Parikh and Mandar Parikh.