Dr Somayajulu has made significant contribution towards the basic understanding of a number of ancient and contemporary marine processes. A number of nuclear methods developed by him for the determination of the growth rates of manganese nodules, large scale advection-diffusion mixing of ocean waters, accumulation rates of sediments, and for the study of geochemistry of reactive elements in sea water, have provided new means for studying complex physico-chemical reactions within the oceans and in the water-sediment interface. His beryllium-10 studies on manganese nodules led to a definitive conclusion about their slow rates of growth.