Sarvepalli Gopal
Indian historian
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Early life and education
Sarvepalli Gopal was born in Madras, India, on 23 April 1923 into a middle-class family. He was the only son of S. Radhakrishnan, the first vice-president and second president of independent India, and Sivakamu. He had five sisters.
Gopal was educated at Mill Hill School in London and at the Madras Christian College. He was an undergraduate student of history at Balliol College, Oxford, where he won the Curzon Prize. He continued as a student at Balliol earning his PhD on the viceroyalty of Lord Ripon in 1951.
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Career
Subsequently, he was appointed as a Director in the Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India, in the 1950s, where he worked closely with Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. In the 1960s, he was a Reader in Indian History at St Antony's College, Oxford. When the new Jawaharlal Nehru University was founded by the then Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, he was appointed as a Professor of History at the Centre for Historical Studies, which he helped in setting up. In the 1970s, he was a Chairman of the National Book Trust, New Delhi.
Death
Gopal died due to kidney failure in Chennai on 20 April 2002, three days before his 79th birthday.