At the time of his death he was a Distinguished Professor and Director of the International Centre for Advanced Studies in Physical Sciences at the Ruhr University in Bochum, Germany. He was also an Adjunct Professor in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department of the University of California, San Diego and in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, Delhi University, India. He published over 1400 journal articles during his career and was editor-in-chief of the Journal of Plasma Physics.

He received doctorate degrees Physics from both Banaras Hindu University in India and from Umea University in Sweden and also honorary doctorates from the Russian Academy of Sciences (Moscow) and the Technical University of Lisbon (Portugal). He also received numerous other honors, including Fellow of the American Physical Society, Fellow of the Institute of Physics (UK), and Corresponding Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (UK).

He had an engaging personality and will be sorely missed by his colleagues in the world's plasma physics and fusion communities.