Rudranath Capildeo (; 2 February 1920 – 12 May 1970) was a Trinidadian and Tobagonian politician, mathematician and barrister. He was a member of the prominent Hindu Indo-Trinidadian Capildeo family. Capildeo was the leader of the Democratic Labour Party (DLP) from 1960 to 1969 and the first Leader of the Opposition in the Parliament of the independent Trinidad and Tobago from 1962 to 1967. He was also a faculty member at the University of London, eventually holding the position of Reader of Mathematics. He was awarded the Trinity Cross, the nation's highest award, in 1969. Early years and education Rudranath Capildeo was born on the 2nd of February 1920 into a Brahmin Hindu Indo-Trinidadian family at Anand Bhavan (translation: Mansion of Eternal Bliss; aka Lion House) on the Main Road in the city of Chaguanas in Caroni County in the then British-ruled Trinidad and Tobago. His father was Pundit Capil Deo Dubey, an indentured laborer who emigrated from Mahadeva Dubey Village, Maharajganj, Gorakhpur, North-Western Provinces, British India (present-day Mahadeva Dubey, Maharajganj, Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh, India) in 1894, and his mother was Soogee Capildeo (née Gobin). Capildeo was 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, his thesis being entitled "The flexure problem in elasticity". Career Capildeo held lectureships 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. Capildeo's entry into politics in the late 1950s was because the political figures who entered the DLP in 1957 did not trust each other, and could only agree on him. Though he left Trinidad in 1939 to study medicine, he changed his course of study, focusing on applied mathematics and physics. He was committed to understanding the nature of space and time, and this sparked his interest in understanding Einstein's Theory of Special Relativity. This work led to several new theories, which had practical implications in aerodynamics and space. They included "The Flexure Problem in Elasticity" (Ph.D. thesis) and his study on the "Theory of