Varadaraja V. Raman  Varadaraja Venkata Raman (better known as V.V. Raman; born 28 May 1932 in Calcutta, India) is Emeritus Professor of Physics and Humanities at the Rochester Institute of Technology. He has lectured and written on his Indian heritage and culture and has also authored books and articles on the intersection of science and religion. Raman has been a frequent guest on the PBS television series "Closer to Truth". Scholarly reception of his work has been mixed, with some criticizing his apologias for the metaphysical claims of Hinduism, and others commending his contributions to the conversation on these issues. Raman was born to a Brahmin Tamil family residing in Bengal. He did his undergraduate work in physics, with a first postgraduate degree in mathematics. He did his doctoral studies in theoretical physics at the Sorbonne in Paris, in French under Nobel laureate Louis de Broglie. The focus was the mathematical underpinning of quantum mechanics. He served the UNESCO for several years, "living in many nations as an educational expert for the United Nations." Eventually, Raman emigrated from Calcutta in 1966, and joined the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, New York as a professor of Physics and Humanities. He would then spend many years as chairman of the RIT Physics Department. By 1983, Raman had become an occasional guest columnist for the Rochester "Democrat and Chronicle". In 1991, Raman served on a panel to "investigate possible CIA influences on academic programs", and determine whether RIT should cut ties with the American Central Intelligence Agency. He was elected the 2004-2005 Metanexus Institute Fellow on Science and Religion, in which capacity he delivered six lectures at the Hillel Hall of the University of Pennsylvania on Indic Visions in an Age of Science. In 2006, Raman received the Raja Rao Award for Literature, given for "outstanding contributions to the literature and culture of the South Asian Diaspora". Raman contributed articles or other work to several encyclopedias, including Scribner's "Dictionary of Scientific Biography" (1981), and the Sage "Encyclopedia of Religious and Spiritual Development", 1st Edition (2005). In the mid 2000s Raman served as both a contributing author and one of four executive editors of the eighteen-volume "Encyclopedia of Hinduism." Since 2008, Raman has been a frequent guest on the PBS television series "Closer to Truth", first appearing as a guest in the series 3 inaugural episode "Does God Make Sense?"