Professor Rangachari Narayanan graduated in Civil Engineering from Annamalai University (India) in 1951 and subsequently obtained his MSc and PhD degrees from Imperial College and Manchester University respectively. He is a Chartered Engineer, licensed to practise in Europe and is a Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers and of the Institution of Structural Engineers. His honours include the Benjamin Baker Gold Medal and George Stephenson Gold Medal, both from the Institution of Civil Engineers and an honorary membership of the British Steel Construction Institute and of INSDAG. He is a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Constructional Steel Research (JCSR) published from England.

In a varied professional career spanning 50 years, he has held Professorships in India, UK and USA and also headed the Education and Publications Division at the Steel Construction Institute in England. He has published over 130 papers in professional and learned society journals; edited 10 books on the "Stability and Strength" Series of Elseviers; presented over 25 papers in International Conferences; edited the Proceedings of the International Conference on Steel and Aluminium Structures 1987 (3 volumes). He has delivered seminars and keynote addresses at the invitation of many International Conferences and Universities in recent years. (USA, Canada, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Singapore, Malaysia, Japan and India)

He led the Project Team, which generated this Teaching Resource. The Team was drawn from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, Anna University and the Structural Engineering Research Centre Madras.