Supriya Ray, 83, of La Canada, CA, peacefully passed away on the morning of Friday, August 17, 2018.

He lived a remarkable life marked by great adversity. Born in 1935 in Dhaka, British India (present day Bangladesh), he survived the Bengal Famine of 1943 and the Partition of India in 1947. As a result of the latter, his Hindu family was displaced from their ancestral home and forced to resettle as penniless refugees in Calcutta, West Bengal.

After a decade of struggle and steadfast determination, he arrived in the US as a graduate student in Physics in 1963 and earned a PhD in Physics from the University of California. The majority of his life was spent in La Canada, CA where he raised his family, worked for NASA/JPL and later worked for the US aerospace industry.

His professional accomplishments and contributions at JPL include working on the Helios project (which notably verified the results of Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity) and the Viking Orbiter (which sent back the first high resolution images of Mars’ surface), and helping to build numerous satellites to further the defense of the United States while working for the Aerospace Corporation, Hughes, and later Northrup Grumman.

He believed in working hard, being humble, and letting truth be his guiding light. He was a believer of the Hindu Advaita Vedanta tradition and devoted disciple of Shri Ramakrishna and Sarada Devi.

Mr. Ray is survived by his wife Krishna, his daughter Nandini, son-in-law Ashish of Hopkinton, three sons: Kanishka, Sumukh, and Soumya, as well as four grandchildren.