Dr. Chiru Bhattacharya created The Anustup Bhattacharya Endowed Fund to honor her late brother.

The Anustup Bhattacharya Endowed Fund is a tribute that Mathematics professor Dr. Chiru Bhattacharya has had in her heart for more than 30 years. 

She lost her brother Anustup in 1992 after prolonged mental health struggles, while the pair were both in college. In the years since, she has often ruminated about how to honor his memory and pay tribute to his curious mind.  

Growing up in their middle-class Indian household, Anustup had a big tub of wires, batteries, and broken electronics. “Anytime he got a little extra pocket money,” she remembers, smiling, “he would go buy a transistor, or a soldering iron or batteries or something.” He pursued a major in metallurgical engineering at the top-rated India Institute of Technology. 

She describes the realization that she could honor him just steps from her office at Randolph-Macon as a connection that seemed “so obvious” as soon as she made it. “I thought Physics and Engineering is right here, on the same floor [in Copley Science Center].” 

The endowed fund helps the Department of Physics, Engineering, and Astrophysics with laboratory and research costs for students, to allow them to do the kind of work Bhattacharya says Anustup loved. “He would have enjoyed knowing that somebody else can freely experiment.” 

Professor Bhattacharya’s generous contribution was enhanced by friends who joined her in donating to the fund. 

After 30 years, Professor Bhattacharya says the fund helps her feel “lighter” in her grief, and she is particularly grateful to be able to see its impact up close in Copley. Though her brother’s college experience unfolded halfway across the world, she feels certain that Randolph-Macon is a place where he would have thrived. His fund helps bring his legacy to life in the physics and engineering labs. And she carries the many lessons his life and death taught her into the classroom as well: 

“I’m not just a math professor. I’m teaching humans and they have lives. I don’t know what’s going on in their lives,” she reflects, “But I should be compassionate.”