Some more thoughts on Teaching vs. Research

There is one amazing thing that just struck me today. This was thinking about the recent conferment of the Fellowship of the Royal Society on Girish Agarwal. And not so long ago on Goverdhan Mehta. These two recepients of this greatest of recognition are both essentially teaching institute people. Although both of them were directors of Research Institutes towards the end of their formal retirement in India (Agarwal has now moved to the US where there is no retirement, and Mehta has an endowed chair in IISc), both of them spent bulk of their important scientific years at teaching institutes. And both of them were at the University of Hyderabad, a Central University for considerable number of years. In other words, data points such as these completely muddy the waters regarding any generalization that can be made regarding getting research accomplished or not, at teaching institutes or elsewhere. Comments welcome.