Tushar Ray was born on October 31, 1939 in Pindira Village, Burdwan District, West Bengal, India, the sixth child and first son of Dr. Kamalakshya and Mrs. Dhumbati Ray. A precocious student, he earned his B.Sc. at Bidhasagar College, Calcutta. He then proceeded to study biochemistry at University of Calcutta, becoming part of the second cohort of graduates in a field newly emergent in India, receiving his M.Sc. and Ph.D.
He was recruited as a postdoctoral researcher to the University of Pittsburgh in 1966. Over the next two decades, Dr. Ray would go on to distinguish himself as a leading figure in the field of ATPase Studies, examining how enzymes in cell mebranes regulate their environment. He was hired as a Research Scientist at the University of Rochester (1969-70) and University California at Berkeley (1970-75), before becoming a Research Professor at the University of Texas Medical Center in Houston, Texas in 1975. In 1979, he became Director of Surgical Research at the State University of New York, Upstate Medical Center in Syracuse, New York, where he remained until his retirement in 1995. His work on the dynamics of acid secretion in the stomach, as well as cellular calcium and sodium transport, resulted in numerous NIH and NSF grants and hundreds of papers in biochemistry, enzymology and physiology, as well as a pharmacological patent.
In 1995 he moved his family to Phoenix to be near his beloved brother, Dr. Basudeb Ray. During the years following his retirement, Dr. Ray remained aligned with his scientific career, but began to focus his interest and inquiry into the confluence between contemporary science and the ancient methods and practices of South Asian yoga and meditation. He opened his own yoga school and helped numerous students engage with and develop their physical and spiritual health. A devotee of Sri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda, Dr. Ray was an active member of the Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Mission and remained committed to a core belief in the sanctity, value and reconcilability of all the world’s great religions.
To these ends, Dr. Ray also became a prolific poet who composed philosophical and devotional poetry in both English and Bengali. A collection of Bengali poems, Ak Pyalar Jyono (“For A Cup of Tea”) was published in Calcutta in 1997. In 2003, he published a collection of English poems entitled Om Poems.
He is survived by his wife, Mukta, son Ashim, granddaughter Mya; his brother, Basudeb (Reba), nieces Sumita and Anita, all of Phoenix, as well as his elder son Amit (Jessica), grandchildren Lucy and Kiran, all of Rochester, NY.
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