| Birth Date: | 15 February 1889 |
| Birth Place: | Delhi, British India |
| Death Place: | Bhopal, Bhopal State, British India |
| Father: | Syed Mahmood |
| Relatives: | Syed Ahmed Khan (grandfather) |
Syed Sir Ross Masood bin Mahmood Khan (15 February 1889 - 30 July 1937), was the Vice-Chancellor of Aligarh Muslim University starting in 1929.[1]
Ross Masood was the son of Syed Mahmood. His grandfather was Sir Syed Ahmed Khan.[1] He had three children: one daughter, Nadira Begum, and two sons, Anwar Masood and Akbar Masood (1917–1971). Ross Masood was educated at Aligarh Muslim University and the University of Oxford.[2]
On his return from England, Masood was elected a trustee of Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College and started his own legal practice in Patna. He then entered the Indian Education Service as headmaster of the Patna High School, a professor of history at Ravenshaw College, Cuttack (Orissa), and one of the founders of Osmania University.[2]
From 1916 to 1928, he was Director of Public Instruction in Hyderabad Deccan. In 1922, he travelled to Japan to assess its educational system as a possible model for Hyderabad. In his publication, Japan and its Educational System (1923), Masood recommended that Hyderabad follow a Japanese model of modernization and educational reform by focusing on the imperial tradition, patriotic nationalism, and freedom from foreign control.[3]
He became the Vice-Chancellor of Aligarh Muslim University in 1929. He was knighted by the British Government in the 1933 Birthday Honours list.[4] Here, he introduced new courses, upgraded the syllabi and established laboratories for various science subjects.[5]
Anjuman Taraqqi-i-Urdu published a biography of Masood in 2011. He was the president of Anjuman Taraqqi-i-Urdu.[6]
A residential hall constructed in the year 1969 in Aligarh Muslim University is named after him.
Ross Masood was linked to the British novelist E. M. Forster. Forster's novel A Passage to India (1924) is dedicated to Masood.[7] [8]