Dr. Pravin K Mehta holds a B.Sc. (Hon) degree in Mathematics from the University of Bombay (1957), a graduate diploma D.M.I.T. in Aeronautical Engineering from the Madras Institute of Technology (1960), and M.S. (1962) and Ph.D. (1966) degrees in Engineering Mechanics from the Pennsylvania State University. Following his Ph.D., he spent one year at Penn State as an Assistant Professor in Engineering Mechanics before joining the Perkin-Elmer Corporation in June 1967. When Perkin-Elmer divested its Electro-Optical business in 1989, he continued with tenure at the successor companies GM Hughes Electronics (1989-1998) and Raytheon Systems Company (1999-2000). Dr. Mehta retired on December 29, 2000, from Raytheon as a Senior Fellow of the Company.

Dr. Mehta worked on a variety of NASA and defense programs for outer space and aerospace applications. Some of the most notable include: (1) the Skylab, (2) the Hubble Space Telescope, (3) the Chandra X-Ray Astronomical Observatory, (4) the Einstein X-Ray Telescope, (5) the Infra-Red Astronomical Satellite (IRAS) and (6) the Sea Lite program. He has approximately 40 publications on subjects including plate and shell mechanics, discrete element numerical analysis, stress waves, opto-structural mechanics, mechanics of adaptive optics, mechanics of polishing large aspheric circular and cylindrical optical surfaces, etc. He has also developed special purpose software, mostly related to opt-structural, adaptive, and optical polishing mechanics.

NOTE: Two of our Centennial Fellows are spotlighted each week.