In Memoriam: Kula C. Misra

With great sadness, the Department of Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences marks the loss of Professor Emeritus Kula C. Misra, who passed away on June 23, 2026, at the age of 89.

Kula was a valued colleague who served as a faculty member at UT for more than three decades. He received a BS degree from the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology and did geologic field mapping for the Indian Geological Survey. Afterward he moved to Canada to obtain a PhD from the University of Western Ontario.

He was among the world’s leading economic geologists interested in the geochemistry and formation of ore deposits and authored two textbooks on the subject: Understanding Mineral Deposits and Introduction to Geochemistry.

Over his long tenure at UT, he taught courses to more than a thousand students and mentored the research of numerous masters and doctoral students. His research also played a significant role in the transformation of the department to its modern form.

Kula’s legacy lives on in our display cases and labs with the research materials he left for future generations, and in the Misra Reading Room, endowed in his honor.

Students will remember him as an enthusiastic and rigorous instructor, filling the blackboard with his meticulous text and drawings to the point where he would emerge from the classroom covered in chalk dust. His graduate students will remember him as an enthusiastic mentor with broad knowledge and an even broader curiosity. And all will remember his quiet kindness and quick smile, his tennis whites, and the faint smell of his pipe smoke.

Most of all, we will remember his generosity. Kula was always willing to give his time, and he served as a friend, mentor, and sometimes father figure to students and faculty alike.