Dr. Mohan Khare

1942-2023

Indian-American scientist and entrepreneur Dr. Mohan Khare passed away peacefully on February 26, 2023, with his wife Meena Khare by his side in their 50th year of marriage. He was blessed to be at home with his family, including his son, daughter-in-law, and three granddaughters whose bright smiles never failed to pierce the fog of Alzheimer's and bring him such joy.

He was born in Varanasi, India, and grew up as the struggle for independence led to the rebirth of freedom for India. He studied nuclear and physical chemistry at the Banaras Hindu University (BHU) and completed his doctoral thesis in 1966.

Following in the footsteps of his elder brother, the late Dr. Bishun N. Khare, a distinguished astrophysicist, Mohan arrived in America in 1968 for postdoctoral research work in Corvallis, Oregon; College Park, Maryland; and Ithaca, New York.

Joining Bishun at Cornell in Prof. Carl Sagan’s lab, he met and married Meena Khare in 1973, celebrating the birth of their son Rohit Khare in 1974. There, he adapted his expertise in nuclear physics and mass spectroscopy to cutting-edge research in environmental chemistry for detecting pollution in air, water, and soil.

As the American awareness of the ecological impact of industry grew in the 1970s and 1980s, the new US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) discovered and recovered Superfund sites using standard operating procedures (SOPs) he helped establish at Dow Chemical, in Knoxville, Tennessee; the Desert Research Institute, in Las Vegas, Nevada; Rockwell International in Los Angeles, California; EA Engineering in Baltimore, Maryland; and Recra Environmental in Columbia, Maryland.

On the twentieth anniversary of the Apollo Moon landing, he stepped up from managing laboratories to founding his own environmental analytical laboratory, Envirosystems, Inc on July 20, 1989. Over the following two decades, he and his team provided data on organic and inorganic toxic waste of “known quality to withstand scientific and legal challenges” to serve federal, state, and local governments, as well as Fortune 500 industrial clients.

As a lifetime member of the American Chemical Society (ACS) and lifelong supporter of the Ramakrishna Mission in his hometown of Varanasi, India, he encouraged his own family and his many nieces and nephews to also invest in their education and pursue scientific careers, here and in India. He retired to Menlo Park, California in 2018 to be closer to his son, Dr. Rohit Khare, daughter-in-law Dr. Smruti Vidwans, and cherished granddaughters Zoya, Jaya, and Diya Khare.

He will be cremated on Tuesday, February 28 at 11:00 AM at Alameda Family Funeral & Cremation in Saratoga, California, with a live stream available. There will also be a Hindu Puja starting at 3:00 PM on Friday, March 3rd at home in Menlo Park, California.