Hard work is a tough nut to crack but whoever has the dedication and determination to stay still, then this hard work pays off. Here's a similar story of Uppugunduri Aswathanarayana, a scientist from Andra Pradesh fought from all the odds to gain success in his life.
Poverty caused Aswathanarayana to have a challenging upbringing. He attended the Ongole, Andhra Pradesh, India, Municipal High School. He had to walk barefoot in the scorching sun for a considerable distance, which almost cost him the mathematics exam in the Secondary School Leaving Certificate of the then Madras Presidency when he arrived at the examination hall thirty minutes late. He broke the previous record for the exam's total points and received a perfect score in mathematics.
His parents' inability to pay for college nearly caused him to give up on the idea of attending, despite his excellent high school performance. In the end, his mother had to sell the jewels she owned in order to pay for his college education and his subsequent university education.
He began his doctoral studies in what would later be known as nuclear geology thanks to the vision of his mentor, Prof. C. Mahadevan of Andhra University. Back then, geology was merely a hammer and hand lens endeavour. With the aid of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai, he built his own equipment to conduct radioactivity studies for his doctoral work.
Using equipment that he built himself with assistance from the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, he conducted radioactivity studies for his doctoral thesis. The thesis was the first in India on nuclear geology and was reviewed by Louis Ahrens at Oxford at the time, Arthur Holmes, F.R.S., of the UK, and J. Tuzo Wilson, F.R.S., of Canada. After that, in 1957, he worked as a post-doctoral researcher on lead isotopes with Clair Patterson at Caltech, and in 1963, he worked as a Rb-Sr and K-Ar dating scientist with Stephen Moorbath at Oxford, England.
UNDP and Finnish associates collaborated on a project involving Aswathanarayana, to improve human welfare in Africa by utilizing geoscience to identify and address diseases endemic to the environment.
Aswathanarayana has received numerous awards for his exceptional work, including the Excellence in Geophysical Education Award (2005), the American Geophysical Union's International Award (2007), the International Association of GeoChemistry's Certificate of Recognition (2007), and the Sivananda Trust of India's Eminent Citizen Award in the field of Water Sciences (2007).
