Rudranath Capildeo

Dr. Rudranath Capildeo (February 17, 1920 – May 12, 1970) was a Trinidad and Tobago politician and mathematician. He was the Leader of the Democratic Labour Party from 1960–1969 and Leader of the Opposition in Parliament from 1961–1963, succeeding Ashford Sinanan. He was also a faculty member at the University of London, eventually holding the position of Reader of Mathematics. He was also the younger brother of Simbhoonath Capildeo and uncle of Nobel Prize-winning author V.S. Naipaul and of Shiva Naipaul. He married Ruth Goodchild in 1944 and they had one son named Rudy. Rudranath had one daughter named Anne (Gasteen), whose Mother was Shirley Anne Gasteen. Anne had two children - Andrew Macdonald (1992-) and Catherine Macdonald (1996-), (His Grandchildren). He was awarded the Trinity Cross (the nation's highest award) in 1969.

Capildeo was born in Chaguanas, Trinidad, the youngest child of the prominent Capildeo family. He was educated at Queen's Royal College in Port of Spain where he won an island scholarship in 1938. He attended the University of London where he obtained his BSc in Mathematics and Physics in 1943, his MSc in Mathematics in 1945 and his PhD in Mathematical Physics in 1948, thesis title: "The flexure problem in elasticity".

Capildeo held lecturships at the University of London, including at both University College London and at Westfield College. He also taught briefly at Queen's Royal College (1945) and was Principal of the Polytechnic Institute in Port of Spain in 1959.

While Capildeo was a man of undoubted intelligence, his entry into politics in the late 1950s was due to the fact that the political figures who entered the DLP in 1957 did not trust each other, and could only agree on him.

His political career was unusual, since he was active only during election campaigns (in 1961 and 1967) and during the summer months. His conduct of the last pre-independence electoral campaign, in 1961, was also unusual, beginning with his declaration that because he understood Einstein he could "compress the time" necessary to undo what the sitting government had done.