Newsletter of the Indian Academy of Sciences

Inside...2006 Mid-Year Meeting .................. 1

72nd Annual Meeting, IndoreScientific Programme ..................... 2

IASc–INSA Joint 11th PlanRecommendations toPlanning Commission .................... 3

Academy Journals —Co-publication with Springer ........... 4

Special Issues of Journals .............. 4

Public Lectures .............................. 5

Discussion Meetings ...................... 6

Refresher Courses ......................... 6

Lecture Workshops ........................ 7

Obituaries ...................................... 8

No. 44 September 2006

2006 Mid-Year MeetingThe 17th Mid-Year Meeting of the Academy was held on July 14 and 15, 2006 atthe Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. There was good attendance, with 156Fellows (80 from Bangalore), 4 Associates, and 48 Teacher invitees (12 fromBangalore) participating.

The opening Special Lecture by J N Goswami, titled“Origin of the solar system: A cosmic accident?” hadobvious appeal to a general audience. Goswamidescribed many experiments on fossil records of short-lived nuclides as time markers performed by himself andhis associates. Their results have led to a rather surprisingconclusion: the time span over which gravitationalcollapse of a cold dense molecular cloud led to formationof the solar system seems to have been much shorter

than was earlier believed. This has led to the possibility that the formation processwas caused by an external trigger, possibly the death of a massive star in thecloud neighbourhood, resulting in a supernova.

The second Special Lecture of the meeting was byK VijayRaghavan on “The development of locomotiveability”. Key questions one asks are: how does the abilityto move emerge during animal development, and howare networks of connections formed that permit complexmovements and behaviour practically immediately afterbirth? VijayRaghavan pointed out that our understandingof the emergence of the ability to move is rather poor,though the ways in which patterns of gene expressionregulate this development is demonstrable.

The public lecture on “What do mathematicians do,and how?” by M S Narasimhan to a packed hall wasfascinating. The speaker was able to convey manykey ideas even to nonmathematicians in the audienceextremely effectively by his manner of presentation— the roles of abstraction, generalization and intuitionin the structure of mathematics and in discovery;the degree to which help is obtained from the way

2

EDITORN Mukunda

Published byIndian Academy of SciencesBangalore 560 080, IndiaPhone: (080) 2361 2546, 2361 4592email: office@ias.ernet.in

This newsletter is available on theAcademy website at : www.ias.ac.in/patrika/

To receive a regular copy of theNewsletter, please write to theExecutive Secretary of the Academy(madhavan@ias.ernet.in)

Forthcoming Events–2006/0772nd Annual MeetingDevi Ahilya Vishwavidyalaya, Indore(see programme on p. 2)

Refresher CoursesAdvanced topics in chemistryLady Doak College, Madurai(7–20 November 2006)Experimental chemistryUniversity of Hyderabad(27 November–10 December 2006)Tensors and their applications inengineering sciencesIndian Institute of Science, Bangalore(11–23 December 2006)Topics in mathematics and physicsRamakrishna Mission Vidyamandira,Belur Math, Dt. Howrah(14–26 May 2007)

Lecture WorkshopsMolecular endocrinologySree Narayana College, Kannur(26–27 October 2006)Modern biologySt. Pious College, Hyderabad(27–28 October 2006)Frontier lectures in biologyJnana Bharathi Campus,Bangalore University(October/November 2006)Modern biologyAurora Degree College, Hyderabad(17–18 November 2006)Frontier lectures in physicsJnana Bharathi Campus,Bangalore University(February/March 2007)

Nature works; and the importance of proof in building up adependable basis of knowledge. He organized different areas ofmathematics according to their basic inspirational sources: shapesto geometry, operations to algebra, and the study of change leadingto calculus. And he contrasted the styles of problem solvers onthe one hand, and theory builders on the other. It was a feast ofideas for the intelligent mind.

Apart from the above, there were a dozen lectures by recentlyelected Fellows and Associates.

For the Teacher invitees, a full day programme of lectures on“Biology Today” was organized under the leadership ofV Nanjundiah, on the day prior to the Academy meeting. Therewere eight presentations in all, on several areas of modernbiological research, which were informative to all teachers includingthose from subjects other than the Life Sciences. A record ofthese presentations has been prepared on CD’s and distributedto all the teachers who were present.

72ND ANNUAL MEETING,INDORE

SCIENTIFIC PROGRAMMEVenue: Devi Ahilya Vishwavidyalaya10 November 2006 (Friday)0930–1100 Inauguration and Presidential address by

TV Ramakrishnan, Banaras Hindu University,VaranasiStrong correlations, local constraints, and gaugetheories for electrons in solids

1130–1300 Lectures by Fellows/Associates1130 TN Guru Row, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore

Intermolecular interactions in crystals: newdirections

1200 Chitra Mandal, Indian Institute of Chemical Biology,Kolkata9-Oacetylated sialic acids: the way sugar speaksfor the survival of cancer cells in childhoodleukaemia

1230 Sanjay Puri, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New DelhiKinetics of phase separation and wetting atsurfaces

1430–1730 SymposiumThe state of Indian science: problems, prospectsand indicators (Convener: R Gadagkar)

1430 R Gadagkar, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore

Introduction1440 Aparna Basu, Fellow, GNR Genome Informatics

Knowledge Centre, New DelhiScientometrics and science indicators: uses andpitfalls

1510 MS Valiathan, Manipal Academy of HigherEducation, ManipalIndian medical research today

3

1600 P Rama Rao, IARC for Powder Metallurgy& New Materials (ARCI), HyderabadThe status of India’s higher technicaleducation: What is the way forward?

1630 Tejaswini Niranjana, Centre for the Studyof Culture and Society, BangaloreNarratives of decline? Social sciences-humanities education in India

1700 T Ramasami, Secretary, Department ofScience and Technology, New DelhiSome planned interventions inrejuvenating Indian science

1730 R Gadagkar, Indian Institute of Science,BangaloreGeneral discussion and concludingremarks

1800–1900 S Ramaseshan Memorial Public Lecture,MGK Menon, President, Indian StatisticalInstitute, New DelhiThe changing face of science

1930–2030 Business Meeting of Fellows11 November 2006 (Saturday)

0930–1030 Special lectureKankan Bhattacharyya, Indian Associationfor the Cultivation of Science, KolkataStudy of organized and biologicalassemblies using an ultrafast laser

1100–1330 SymposiumGenetically modified crops (Convener:Deepak Pental)

1100 Deepak Pental, University of Delhi, DelhiBreeding of mustard throughconventional and molecular methods

1130 Rakesh Tuli, National Botanical ResearchInstitute, LucknowDesigning promoters for regulatedgene expression in transgenic plants

1200 Anil Grover, University of Delhi SouthCampus, New DelhiProduction of abiotic stress toleranttransgenic crops achievements andfailures

1230 Raju Barwale, Mahyco, JalnaImpact of use of genetically modifiedcrops on agricultural production andfarmers income: case of bollgard cotton

1300 KR Kranthi, Central Institute of CottonResearch, NagpurBt and the beast

1430–1730 Lectures by Fellows/Associates1430 S Ramakrishnan, Indian Institute of

Science, BangaloreMolecular engineering of polymericsystems

1500 CS Rajan, TIFR, MumbaiOn spectrum and arithmetic

1530 Sandip P Trivedi, TIFR, MumbaiWhispers from the big bang and theemerging landscape of string theory

1630 Kalyanmoy Deb, Indian Institute ofTechnology, KanpurComputational optimization: scope andstatus in practical problem-solving

1700 BK Thelma, University of Delhi, DelhiComplex diseases in humans — genomeanalysis and beyond

1800–1900 Public lectureAndre Beteille, Indian Council of SocialScience Research, New DelhiUniversities at the cross-roads12 November 2006 (Sunday)

0900–1000 Special lectureR Gadagkar, Indian Institute of Science,BangaloreThe functional organization of an insectsociety

1030–1230 Lectures by Fellows/Associates1030 Charusita Chakravarty, Indian Institute of

Technology, New DelhiMobility and order in liquids

1100 Shankar Ghosh, Tata Institute ofFundamental Research, MumbaiMotion of a sphere in an oscillatoryboundary layer: an optical tweezer-based study

1130 GS Bhat, Indian Institute of Science, BangaloreBreathing tropics

1200 Nibir Mandal, Jadavpur University, KolkataTectonics of an orogen

IASC–INSA JOINT 11THPLAN RECOMMENDATIONS

TO PLANNINGCOMMISSION

Over the three-month period June–July–August 2006,in a unique cooperative effort involving the Academyand INSA, New Delhi, a comprehensive set ofdetailed recommendations has been generatedand presented to the Planning Commission forconsideration in formulating the 11th Five Year Plan. Titled“Higher education in science and researchand development: the challenges and the road ahead,” itaddresses several major issues confronting the scienceeducation and research scene in the country including:upgradation of existing universities and colleges, creationof new institutions, movement between S&T streams andindustry, new scholarships at various levels, programmesfor teachers, better opportunities for women in science,and improvements in the competitive grant system forresearch projects. The document is posted on theAcademy website under Higher education in science.

4

ACADEMY JOURNALS —CO-PUBLICATION WITH

SPRINGERIn recent months, several leading international STMpublishers — Elsevier, Nature, Springer, Institute ofPhysics Publishing — have approached the Academywith proposals for copublishing some or all of its journals.On 12 August 2006 a full-day meeting was arrangedwhere the first three groups mentioned above madedetailed presentations. These were preceded bypreparations and correspondence over several months.Separate meetings with IOPP had been held in August2005 and March 2006. After evaluation and discussionsinvolving office bearers, Publication Committeemembers, and all Chief Editors and many AssociateEditors, an agreement is being entered into with Springeron copublication of the Academy’s ten journals (i.e. allexcept Current Science). The Indian (domestic) editionswill be handled totally by the Academy, while theInternational editions will be dealt with jointly. Inparticular, the Academy server will provide full free openaccess to all journals (and archives) worldwide, whileSpringerlink will host the international editions. Accessto the international edition to all users in developingcountries will be provided at substantially subsidizedrates. Subscription rates for individuals and institutionsoutside India will be determined by consultation. AllEditorial Boards and editorial decisions on acceptanceof submissions, special issues etc. will remain in thehands of the Academy.

It is hoped that as a result of this arrangement — tobegin with for a three-year period — the visibility of ourjournals worldwide will increase, gradually improve theirimpact factors, and in the course of time lead to moresubmissions of good quality papers both from withinIndia and from elsewhere.

SPECIAL ISSUES OFJOURNALS

Proc. DAE–BRNS solid statephysics symposiumGuest Editors: J V Yakhmi, V K Aswal andK G BhushanPramana, Vol. 67, No. 1, July 2006, pp. 1–226

The 50th annual Solid State Physics Symposiumsponsored by the Board of Research in NuclearSciences (Department of Atomic Energy) was organizedduring December 2005 at the Bhabha Atomic ResearchCentre and the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research,

The fundamentalconstituents of matter arethought to be quarks andleptons, which interact byexchange of gauge bosons.The hadrons (baryons andmesons) are colour-neutralobjects made of quarksinteracting via stronginteraction mediated bygluons. There is, however,still no clear understandingof the internal structure ofthe hadrons and theirproperties. Various probes such as photons, electrons,muons and hadronic particles have been employed toexplore the properties of hadrons. Recent discoveries ofpentaquarks have opened up new avenues for theoreticaland experimental studies in this area. New experimentalfacilities have come up in recent years, which will helpin providing fresh insights into the nature of the stronginteractions. The theory of quantum chromodynamics,which is accepted as the theory of quarks and gluons,can be tested more rigorously by careful measurementsusing these facilities.

The DAE–BRNS Workshop on hadron physics held atPuri in Orissa in March 2005 was aimed at providing aplatform for physicists working in the area of stronginteraction at GeV energies. The deliberations areexpected to result in further collaborations amongtheorists and experimentalists working in this area. TheWorkshop dealt with different aspects such as medium

Mumbai. Several seniorscientists, who had giventheir best to the growth ofcondensed matter researchin the country attended thesymposium. In all, about 800delegates and participantsattended.

Over 750 contributed paperswere received from variousresearch institutes anduniversities across thecountry. The symposiumcomprised of 30 invited talks covering different areas ofcondensed matter physics of which 20 are included inthis special issue of Pramana.

Proc. DAE–BRNS workshop onhadron physicsGuest Editors: Shashi C Phatak, Pradip K Sahu andRadhe ShyamPramana, Vol. 66, Nos. 4/5, April/May 2006,pp. 621–960

5

SPECIAL ISSUES

modification of hadron properties, hadronic structure andexcitations and the underlying theoretical models. Indiadoes not have any accelerator facility at present forcarrying out these studies. The 2.5 GeV electronsynchrotron at CAT, Indore when operational, has thepotential for exploring the field of intermediate energyhadron physics. The Workshop covered the experimentaland theoretical scenarios in the frontier area of hadronphysics. The proceedings of theWorkshop published intwo numbers of Pramana contained texts of invited talksincluding reviews by expert theoreticians andexperimentalists and shorter presentations by otherWorkshop participants.

Statistical techniques in electricaland computer engineeringGuest Editor: P S SastrySadhana, Vol. 31, No. 2, April 2006, pp. 81–198

Stochastic models and statistical inference from themhave been popular methodologies in a variety ofengineering disciplines, notably in electrical andcomputer engineering. Recent years have seen explosivegrowth in this area, driven by technological imperatives.These now go well beyond their traditional domain ofqueuing models and signal processing to novelmethodologies deriving from a variety of areas such asrandom graphs, stochastic differential equations,classification and regression etc. These find applicationsranging from artificial intelligence and manufacturing tobioinformatics.

The present issue collects together some of the materialpresented at two discussion meetings held under theauspices of the Indian Academy of Sciences, and/orrelated material provided by some of the speakers. Themeetings were on ‘Monte Carlo methods and relatedtechniques’ in Coorg during November 2004, and on‘Machine learning’ in Bangalore during September 2005.It covers a broad spectrum of statistical methodologiescurrently having impact on electrical and computerengineering. While not exhaustive, it is fairlyrepresentative of where things are headed. This specialissue consists of six papers.

PUBLIC LECTURES

nanostructures, at hightemperatures near the meltingpoint of the correspondingbulk solid. Surface melting(wetting of the solid by its ownmelt) and non-melting wasintroduced, and discussedmostly from a theoreticalviewpoint. The diverse hightemperature surface behaviour

Physics of crystal surfaces andnanofriction near the meltingpointE Tosatti(International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Trieste)17 July 2006, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore

In the first part the speaker reviewed the physicalbehaviour of crystal surfaces, and to some extent of

of different classes of materials was brieflydiscussed, and demonstrated with the help ofmolecular dynamics simulation results. Materials willencompass van der Waals solids, valence semi-conductors, metals, and ionic crystals. Solid liquidinterfaces, and some properties of liquid surfaces,especially in alkali halides, may also be expandedupon, depending on time.

In the second part the speaker briefly describeda recent research line on friction and nanofrictionof hard tips on nonmelting crystal surfaces neartheir melting point. Using NaCl (100) as a testcase, the speaker used molecular dynamicssimulations of sliding nanofriction to exemplify theheavy plowing, wear-dominated regime, and the lightgrazing, phononic friction regime. Plowing frictionexhibits a strong frictional drop near the meltingpoint, the tip “skating” as it were over the hot solid.At the opposite extreme, the grazing, wear-freefriction of a flat-ended tip exhibits a surge offriction near the melting point, where the surfaceis still solid, but not too far from a vibrationalinstability. This frictional rise can be seen as ananalog of the celebrated “peak effect” found closeto Hc2 in the mixed state critical current of type IIsuperconductors.

Dark Matter: what is it? where is it?can we make it in the lab?Michael E Peskin(Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, California, USA)7 September 2006, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore

Eighty percent of the matter in the universe is“dark matter”, a neutral, diffuse, and weakly-interactingmaterial made of an unknown elementary particle.In this lecture, the speakerdiscussed the evidence forthe existence of dark matterand methods for observingdark matter particles in thegalaxy. The speaker thendiscussed the possibility ofproducing dark matter in thelaboratory at high-energyparticle accelerators.

6

Physics in the world around usEdouard Brezin(Laboratoire de Physique Theorique de l’Ecole NormaleSuprieure, Paris Cedex, France)

15 September 2006, Indian Institute of Science,Bangalore

DISCUSSION MEETINGS

Flow control and diagnosticsOrange County, Coorg19–22 February 2006

Co-ordinator: R Narasimha

Flow diagnostics and control have always been ofgreat importance in technology, but in recentdecades they have become particularly active areasof research. This great surge of current interest canbe traced to two reasons. The first is the potentialfor control of turbulent flows revealed by the discoveryof coherent structures in what generally hadbeen considered motion with complete disorder. Thesecond is that great advances have recently beenmade in the technology of sensors, actuators,computers and related systems, making it attractiveto consider small active control systems with aperformance surpassing those that had earlier beenavailable. Progress in MEMS and in nanotechnologiesis unveiling ever newer possibilities.

An Academy Discussion Meeting to considerthese advances seemed appropriate. There were27 participants including from USA and UK. Thefour-day programme contained 22 presentationsin sessions that dealt with flow control, flowdiagnostics and flow instability.

REFRESHER COURSES

Excitements in computationalphysical and bio-sciencesInternational Institute of Information Technology,Hyderabad

June 12–17, 2006

No. of participants: 34

Course Co-ordinator: Nita Parekh (IIIT, Hyderabad)

Resource persons: R Gadagkar (IISc, Bangalore);Ramesh Hariharan (CTO, Bangalore); VK Gaur(IIA, Bangalore); Amitabh Joshi (JNCASR, Bangalore);Rahul Siddharthan (IMSc, Chennai); R Ramaswamy(JNU, Delhi); AK Mallik (IIT, Kanpur); Indira Ghoshand SR Gadre (University of Pune); B Jayaram(IIT, New Delhi); Prasad Bharatam (NIPER, SAS Nagar);D Balasubramanian (LV Prasad Eye Inst, Hyderabad);HA Nagarajaram and Shekhar C Mande (CDFD,Hyderabad); R Srinivasan (TCS, Hyderabad) andSomdatta Sinha (CCMB, Hyderabad).

The participants represented institutions fromAhmedabad, Banasthali, Bangalore, Chandigarh,Chennai, Chidambaram, Cochin, Hyderabad, Kolhapur,Kolkata, New Delhi, Noida, Panvel, Pune, Rajkot, Sikkim,Vellore.

Topics covered: Deciphering honey bee dancelanguage, properties of simple sequences, nonlineardynamics, data driven biology, bioinformatics andcomputational biology, theoretical and computationalquantum chemistry, gene to drug, pharmacoinformaticsand drug designing, structural bioinformatics, globalcarbon cycle, evolutionary genetics and overview ofmodelling biological systems.

We are all aware that manypresent technologies grew outof our understanding of matter:information technologies,medical imaging, nuclearenergy, CD’s and DVD’s arejust examples present ineverybody’s mind. Otherexamples are less obvious:for instance the GPS requiresatomic clocks and it wouldn’t

work without Einstein’s general relativity. In thistalk the speaker reviewed briefly some of theprinciples underlying these technologies. It wasstressed that in most cases they emergedas side consequences of pure knowledge-drivencuriosity.

7

LECTURE WORKSHOPS

QuarkNet workshopIndian Institute of Science, Bangalore10–11 March 2006

Course Director: Rohini Godbole

Participants: 23 lecturers from various schools andcolleges in Bangalore

A two-day Workshop for school and college teachers,in and around Bangalore was held on March 10 and 11,2006, at the Digital Information Services Centre (DISC)in IISc, Bangalore. The Workshop coincided with twodays of International Linear Collider Workshop(LCWS06) from March 9–13, 2006. The QuarkNet teamfrom the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (FAL)along with S C Tonwar and B S Acharya from TIFR andRaghava Varma from IIT, Mumbai conducted theWorkshop.

Our education system places lot of emphasis onacquisition of knowledge and memorizing facts. Theseare, no doubt, necessary skills but what is moreimportant is to produce students with a high degree ofanalytical abilities. It is here that our education systemis found wanting. Students are encouraged to cram alot of information in their courses and are not providedenough learning experience to evaluate and analysethe data collected.

QuarkNet is a teacher professional developmentprogramme funded by the National Science Foundationand the US Department of Energy. School teacherswork on particle physics experiments and join a cadreof scientists and teachers working to introduce someaspects of their research into their classrooms, bringingthem to the frontiers of 21st century research in particlephysics. The QuarkNet centres are connected to high-energy physics experiments operating at CERN inSwitzerland, at Fermilab in Illinois, at SLAC in Californiaand others. In the framework of this programmephysicists mentor work and collaborate with high schoolteachers spread across the globe. QuarkNet resourcepersons travel around the world and show the teachersand students how to build a simple cosmic ray detector,which consists of a plastic scintillator, a common pieceof equipment in any nuclear or particle physicslaboratory. Along with the detector is attached a globalpositioning system and a data acquisition card whichcan be hooked on to any personal computer. On theoccasion of the International Linear Collider Workshopthe QuarkNet team comprising of Marge Bardeen andRobert S Peterson came with some scintillator pieces,photomultiplier tube, GPS receivers, data acquisitioncard and other relevant material from FAL. Theyconducted the Workshop attended by physics teachers

in and around Bangalore. The teachers were firstintroduced to the subject of cosmic rays and how todetect them. They were then involved in the process ofassembling detector using a plastic scintillator, a lightguide etc and then hooking up the data acquisition cardand the GPS receiver to a PC. The GPS system givesthe data a time stamp. All the data the detector collectsthen resides on the QuarkNet portal (http://quarknet.fnal.gov/e-lab) at FAL. The students/teachersare given username and passwords, using which theywould be able to use the whole set-up to collect dataand upload it to the QuarkNet portal. One can, in turn,have access to the data collected by other schools/students across the globe who are also participating inthe experiment. They will be able to further participatein analysing these data, in the process learning thebasics of data analysis. In all 23 teachers from variousschools and colleges (22 from local schools and collegesand one from Pune) participated in this exercise. RohiniGodbole described the purpose of the Workshop. MargeBardeen introduced the concept of QuarkNet and itsaim to teachers.

These were followed by an inspiring lecture by S CTonwar on what cosmic rays are, how they are detected,what questions about our universe they have helped toanswer and so on. This was followed by an equallyinformative lecture by B S Acharya on detectortechnology, how they are built, and what we measureusing them.

The teachers were then asked to explore the QuarkNetURL at FAL. This was a learning experience for allparticipants. They were allowed access to some of thedata collected elsewhere and see some of the postersprepared. Many of them were creatively thought outproblems. This provided inkling into the nature of workthat could be carried out using the detectors. Later, inthe evening the teachers were divided into four groups:one to assemble the detectors, the other three to chooseone set of data to be analysed. The next day the detectorgroup started fabricating the detector while the othergroups tried to converge on what analysis they shoulddo. The groups engaged in data analysis presentedwhat they were going to look for while the detectorgroup started assembling the detector. Even whileassembling, a whole range of physics was discussedat length. In the afternoon, it was a moment of joy forthe assembly team to see their detector detectingcosmic rays. The participants were finally given a shorttime to present what they learnt from their efforts.Judging by the response of the participants, the meetwas a big success.

The entire hardware kit used in the Workshop wasgifted to the participants for follow up action by theQuarkNet team from USA. The detector is now set upat the Jawaharlal Nehru Planetarium, Bangalore.

8

Bioinorganic chemistryUniversity of Calicut, Calicut3–5 August 2006

Course Director: T K Chandrashekar

Co-ordinator: K Krishnan Kutty

Participants: 120 students and faculty from universitiesand colleges in Calicut

Speakers: V Krishnan (JNCASR, Bangalore);TK Chandrashekar, A Srinivasan and VG Anand (all ofRRL, Thiruvananthapuram); R Ramaraj (MKU, Madurai);M Palaniandavar (Bharathidasan University,Tiruchirappalli) and K Padmakumar (Govt. College,Chittoor).

Topics covered: Importance of bioinorganicchemistry; occurrence of inorganic elements in biologicalsystems, active sites of metal binding biomoleculesand preferences, the role of alkali and alkaline earthmetals in biological processes, biological oxygentransport, haemoglobin and myoglobin, copper proteinsand their biological functions, role of zinc in biologicalsystems, cytochromes, cyochrome vs. vitamin B12,photosynthesis, nitrogen fixation, electron transport inbiological system, metals in medicine and therapy.

OBITUARIES

Manoj Kanti Banerjee(elected 1977) the noted nuclearphysicist, died in Maryland,USA on 18 February 2006. Hewas born on 25 May 1931. Afterhis schooling, he passed B.Scfrom Patna University in 1949,M.Sc from Calcutta Universityin 1951 and obtained Ph.D in1956 working at the Saha

Institute of Nuclear Physics (SINP). He joined the SahaInstitute of Nuclear Physics (SINP), Calcutta as alecturer (1952–57), became a reader (1957–60) and aprofessor (1960–66). Between this period, he also workedat the Princeton University as a research associatefrom 1955 to 1957, and as a Weizmann Fellow at theWeizmann Institute of Physics from 1962–63. In 1966

he went to the University of Maryland as a VisitingProfessor for 2 years, after which he was appointed afull professor of physics at the University. He remainedat Maryland for the next 40 years.

Banerjee had a distinguished career in nuclear physics.He shot to fame early in his career when he developedthe direct interaction theory of inelastic scattering incollaboration with Carl Levinson. Acknowledged as ‘themost complete treatment of direct interaction’, this workincorporated the initial-state and final-state interactions,and allowed for the direct interaction to take placeanywhere inside the nuclear volume, leading to aremarkable agreement with experimental data (carbondata, to be specific) over a wide range of energy.

Among his contributions to the theoryof nuclear structure, a noteworthy pieceof work is the calculation of energyspectra of (2s, 1d) shell nuclei done incollaboration with Levinson andMeshkov. The theory used the SU(3)classification of shell-model states andwas mainly focused on the 24Mgnucleus. His interest in nuclear structurecontinued as he mentored a string ofstudents, including L Satpathy and

Harishchandra. Some of their studies related toapplication of the Hartree–Fock–Bogoliubov method tostructure calculations. He also made interestingobservations on the shapes and symmetries of lightnuclei in collaboration with Levinson and Stephenson.

Banerjee was actively interested in the physics ofnuclear matter. The first ever attempt at adapting themany-body theory to the calculation of the t-matrix forfinite nuclei was due to Banerjee and Binayak DattaRoy. Banerjee returned to the physics of nuclear mattermuch later in his career. In collaboration with Tjon, hestudied the pion-nucleon parameters in nuclear mattercontributing valuable insight regarding their densitydependence. A significant result obtained by Banerjeeis that the derivative-coupled one-pion exchange potentialin nuclear matter is seriously damped in relativisticcalculations contrary to what would be expected in anon-relativistic treatment.

During the sixties, Banerjee’s area of interest expandedto include hadron physics and from the seventies hevigorously devoted himself to the study of low energypion-nucleon physics. Research in hadron physics ofthat era was boosted by the success of quark modelon the one hand and the development of quantumchromodynamics as the gauge theory of stronginteraction on the other, However, direct application ofQCD to low energy hadron physics proved to beextremely difficult and the necessity of constructingQCD-inspired models as effective low energy theorywas felt. In this background, Banerjee collaborated atvarious stages with Birse, Broniowski, Cohen and others

9

to develop and study such models particularly in thecase of baryons. Inspired by considerations of chiralsymmetry, linear sigma model and the Skyrme model,Banerjee along with his colleagues investigated thecolour-dielectric model, the chiral quark-meson modeland the chiral soliton model of nucleon and delta, whichwere reasonably successful in describing the staticproperties of the baryons. More importantly, they joinedseveral other workers in the field to establish theimportance of the role played by the mesons in theeffective theory of strong interaction at low energy.Banerjee’s contributions in the pion-nucleon physicsinclude study of pion-nucleus optical potential andcharge dependence of the πNN coupling constant. Apartfrom doing some research in the role of instantons inchiral confining models, he investigated the baryon masssplitting and the photoproduction of neutral pions inchiral perturbation theory which is considered to be theproper effective field theory of strong interaction.

Banerjee received many honours: the WeizmannFellowship (1962), the Fellowship of the AmericanPhysical Society and the Humboldt Research Award(1966) in recognition of his contributions to science.He will be remembered not only as a devoted scientistbut also as a remarkable teacher and a great sourceof inspiration for a whole generation of physicists. Hiswife Uma passed away sometime ago and he is survivedby Sanjoy, his son.

Mrinal Kumar Dasgupta(elected 1990), the doyen ofresearch in radio astronomy inIndia and the codiscoverer ofdouble radio galaxy, Cygnus A,breathed his last at his SaltLake residence, Kolkata on 28November 2005.

Dasgupta was born on 1September 1923 in Barishal

district of the then undivided Bengal (later East Pakistanand now Bangladesh). He was the third son of Sukumarand Tarubala Dasgupta. His father was a school teacher,who inspired many students. He had his primaryeducation in Barishal, but in later years he was astudent of the famous St. Gregory School in Dacca.When he was in class IX he had the opportunity tolisten to a popular talk on radio communication bySisir Kumar Mitra which left a deep impression on hismind. His destiny finally brought him in close contactwith his idol.

After passing matriculation and intermediateexaminations, Dasgupta studied B.Sc with honours inphysics and then topped M.Sc in physics in 1947,both at Dacca University. He studied under the legendarySatyendra Nath Bose, and many other illustrious

teachers. Unfortunately, the period 1940–47 was turbulentdue to the freedom movement and communal riots andit caused frequent interruptions to his academic life.Following the country’s partition the family decided tocross the border and settle in Calcutta, where he joinedas a research assistant in the newly created Instituteof Radio Physics and Electronics (INRAPHEL) at theUniversity of Calcutta with Sisir Kumar Gupta and wasinvolved in preparing the second edition of Gupta’s famoustreatise “The Upper Atmosphere”. He also startedexperiments on active nitrogen with a view to verifyinga theory proposed by Mitra about the origin of activenitrogen in the upper atmosphere and finally succeededin observing the glow. In 1948 Dasgupta was awardedan overseas fellowship to work with P M S Blackett,Nobel Laureate, at the University of Manchester andlater at the Jodrell Bank with Sir Bernard Lovall.

The subject of radio astronomy was at the formativestage during the 1950s. R Hanbury Brown in 1950conceived a radio interferometer, called the intensityinterferometer. He asked his two research students,Roger Jennison and Dasgupta to design and fabricatea long baseline postdetection correlator radiointerferometer since radio astronomical observations untilthen were beset with poor angular resolutions of radiotelescopes and the limited sensitivity of receivingsystems. This new concept solved that problem. Thebasic idea was to compare the fluctuations in theintensity of the source rather than its voltage, enablinglong baselines. For this purpose two independentreceivers were built at a frequency of 125 MHz with abandwidth of 200 kHz. After a square law detector, thesignals were filtered with a 2 kHz filter and multipliedand their cross-correlation was measured as a functionof baseline between the antennas. This was tried ontwo of the strongest radio sources known, namely,Cygnus A and Cassiopeia. They found that as thebaseline was increased up to 20 km, two large maximain signal amplitude appeared in the case of Cygnus A,whereas a single maximum appeared for Cassiopeia,thus indicating that Cygnus A was not a simple source.The separation of the two ‘radio lobes’ was about 1’ 28”.This was how the classical double radio source structureof radio galaxies was discovered, a discovery of greatimportance in radio astronomy, leading ultimately to theidea of relativistic jets of plasma in two oppositedirections emanating from the nucleus (which is nowconjectured as a large accreting object or a black hole).

Dasgupta was awarded a Ph.D of Manchester Universityin 1954, after which he returned to India to rejoinINRAPHEL as a lecturer. In addition to his normalteaching duties, he started developing a research schoolwith a few students. During the early 1960s UGC wasplanning to establish Centres of Advanced Study inselected University departments and in recognition ofthe pioneering contribution of Sisir Kumar Mitra,

10

INRAPHEL was included in the list. Dasgupta waspromoted as reader and in 1967 became a professor incharge of the thrust area in space physics. He guideda number of Ph.D students, who later held key positionsin USA, Brazil, West Indies, Canada, besides India.Dasgupta made significant research contributions in thefield of atmospherics, solar-terrestrial physics, solarmicrowave and X-ray emission, etc. Some of thesignificant contributions made by him are listed below:(a) the sudden enhancement of the integrated fieldintensity of atmospherics subsequent to nuclear bombexplosions of megaton range; (b) the gradualenhancement of the integrated field intensity ofatmospherics prior to the incidence of Nor’westers;(c) the solar cycle dependence of the incidence ofsporadic E(ES) — a global picture; (d) the variability ofsolar microwave radiations; (e) the effect of a total solareclipse on microwave line-of-sight propagation and alsoon ionospheric total electron content; (f) the effect ofearth’s orbital eccentricity on incident solar flux at 10.7cm; (g) studies on solar radio burst in relation to othersolar optical features; (h) spectral studies on differenttypes of solar microwave emission — basic component,slowly varying and burst components.

Dasgupta became the Head of the Department of RadioPhysics and Electronics and the Director of the Centreof Advanced Study Programme in 1976, the posts heheld till 1980. He was a member of the senate of theUniversity of Calcutta and served in the Governing bodiesof several educational/research institutions and state-owned electronic enterprises.

Dasgupta formally retired from the University in 1988but continued to work for three more years (1988–91)as INSA Senior Scientist in the same Institute. Incollaboration with A K Sen, he successfully conducteda research project on “Microwave rain attenuation fromradiometric measurements at 12 GHz and 22.235 GHz”.The investigations included radiometric signature oflayer clouds; attenuation in clear air and during rainover Calcutta using dual frequency radiometer; rainattenuation characteristics at these wavelengthsfor the earth-space path, and the measurement ofwater vapour content and cloud cover using scanningradiometry at 22.235 GHz.

The radiometric data obtained in clear weather, duringrain and at the time of overhead cloud formation wereanalysed, from which communication parameters andattenuation could be derived. The results show that themonthly variation of parameters clearly follow the monthlyvariation of water vapour density and was found to bemaximum in the month of August. Further the diurnaland seasonal variation of water vapour density overCalcutta has also been obtained. It has been revealedfrom these analyses that the water vapour scale heightaround 2–3 km is in conformity with other observations.

Water vapour profiles for different months were alsodrawn. The peak rain attenuation plotted against peakrain rate and by regression analysis showed that therelationship is linear. It was observed that the rainattenuation persisted for about 2–5 hr even after therain stops presumably due to the presence of largeambient humidity and slow wind activity.

In 1991, Dasgupta initiated a diploma course inastronomy and planetarium science — the first of itskind in India — at the MP Birla Institute of FundamentalResearch in Kolkata in 1992. Dasgupta was elected aFellow of the Indian National Science Academy (1974).He presided over the Engineering Section at the 68thScience Congress at Banaras in 1981.

Dasgupta is survived by his wife Dipali and a son.

Basantidulal Nagchaudhuri(elected 1974) passed away inKolkata in the early hours of25 June 2006. With his passinga distinguished career innuclear physics and scienceadministration came to anend. He will be rememberedfor his invaluable role in thepostindependence developmentof science and technology in our country.

Nagchaudhuri was born into a well-to-do family inBanaras on 6 September 1917. His father, the lateU C Nag Chaudhuri, was a Professor at Banaras HinduUniversity (BHU). At the age of 13 he appeared for thematriculation examination topping the merit list. He wasalso a first class first in B.Sc from BHU in 1935. Aftertaking his M.Sc in physics in 1937 from AllahabadUniversity where he had Meghnad Saha as a teacher,he proceeded to USA for his pre-doctoral work withEO Lawrence at the University of California, Berkeley,from where he obtained his Ph.D in physics in 1940.About this time Saha appointed him as the CyclotronOfficer to help him procure from USA parts for hisdreamchild, cyclotron, a machine first of its kind in thecountry to be built in Kolkata after the 38-inch-model atBerkeley.

On his return Nagchaudhuri joined the University ofCalcutta initially as a lecturer in physics (1942–46) tobecome the Sur reader in nuclear physics (1946–53)and finally the Palit Chair in physics (1953–59) justvacated by Saha. By 1949 the Institute of NuclearPhysics had evolved out of the Palit Laboratory forteaching and cultivating nuclear physics with Saha asDirector. After his untimely demise in 1956, Nagchaudhuristeered the Institute (renamed in 1958 as the SahaInstitute of Nuclear Physics, SINP) to its objective, firstas officiating (1956–59) and then as full Director (1959–67). It took much of doing in those days of teethingtroubles. He held this office until October 1967 when he

11

was called away to the Planning Commission. In October1972, however, he accepted an Honorary Professorshipof the Institute for two years. Between 1941 and 1960and again, between 1960 and 1961, he held a coupleof short-term visiting positions at the Universities ofIllinois (Urbana) and California (Berkeley). He wasappointed the Lincoln Lecturer in USA during 1966–67.Meanwhile, Nagchaudhuri was elected to the Fellowshipof the Indian National Science Academy in 1964. Hewas awarded Padma Vibhushan in 1975. At SINP, whichwas also the seat of the Sur Reader for some time,Nagchaudhuri’s interest lay in the fields of nuclearisomerism, artificial radioactivity, Cerenkov phenomenaand low temperature plasma. He also carried outbiophysical research using radioisotopes as tracerelements and had about 57 papers in national andinternational journals.

As a student in Banaras and Allahabad, Nagchaudhurihad been actively involved in politics (1931–37) even atthe cost of serving small terms in jail. Saha turned hisinborn leadership to science and technology which inlater years caught the fancy of the Government of Indiaand he was assigned to different decision-makingpositions. Thus, apart from membership of PlanningCommission (1967–70), he served as Chairman of theCabinet Committee of Science and Technology (1969–72), Scientific Adviser to the Ministry of Defence andthe Director-General of DRDO (1972–74). In a span offew years he could put defence research in theinternational orbit and initiate the transformation ofscience and technology research and education for thewelfare of the society. He was one of the first few torealize the urgency of developing qualified humanresource in the country and was a natural choice forthe vice-chancellorship of the Jawaharlal NehruUniversity, New Delhi (1974–78). During his time theUniversity became one of the best centres for theproduction of high quality manpower in the country. Hewas also the Chairman of Science and TechnologyManpower Committee, Government of India (1979–81).One of the pioneer scientists of our country bringingenvironment from textbook to practice, Nagchaudhurimade several important observations as the Chairmanof a National Committee on Environmental and PlanningCo-ordination, Government of India (1975–77). Hismessage on the environment reached the United Nationswhere he was drafted and retained as a member ofSenior Scientific Advisory Committee in its environmentprogramme (UNEP) during 1976–82. He put equalemphasis on the development of science andtechnology, quality of environment and people’s welfarein other countries as well, and worked there in variouscapacities. He was a Visiting Professor at the Universityof Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana during1978–79 and a Member of the Board of Trustees(1978–81) and Chairman (1976–82) of the ProgrammeCommittee of the International Foundation of Science,

Stockholm. He also served as a Member of the ScientificCouncil of the International Centre for TheoreticalPhysics, Trieste, Italy (1976–84) and a Member andChairman of the International Advisory Panel, East-WestCentre, Honolulu, Hawai. He chaired the Extra-MuralResearch Committee of CSIR, the Board of Researchin Nuclear Sciences of DAE (1975–77) and the ResearchAdvisory Council of NPL (1980–82). For some time hewas a member of the University of Calcutta Senate andSyndicate as also of the Syndicate of the ManipurUniversity, Imphal.

Nagchaudhuri wrote on various scientific and socialissues. His semipopular scientific articles like low-energynuclear physics, electrodynamics of Cerenkov radiation,radioisotopic tracer in biological experiments are aslucid as enlightening. His other articles like impact ofscience and technology on international relations andthe monographs like Science and Society (AnkurPublishers, Delhi), Technology and Society (Institute ofAdvanced Study, Simla), Environmental Managementin Developing Society (Interprint, Delhi) and Law andEnvironment (with S Bhatt) etc. prove the expanse ofhis expertise. This, and the spectrum of positions heheld show that his science was very different — it wasto transcend the confines of a laboratory.

As a human being, Nagchaudhuri combined the graceof English aristocracy with the genre of a true teacher.Behind the outfit of a hard-core administrator — therelurked a simple man leading plain living and high thinking.He is survived by his wife Dipali, a noted exponent inclassical Hindustani vocal, and his son Dipankar.

Lalit Kumar Pandit (elected1976), the wellknown theoreticalparticle physicist passed awayfollowing a cardiac arrest on 23May 2006, while visiting hiselder son in Boston, USA. Thisis a discernible loss to India’stheoretical physics communitywhich considered him as oneof its valued members.

Born into a Himachali Pandit family on 28 June 1932,Pandit was the fifth of the nine children of Pt. ChanduLal and Kalavati Sharma. The young Pandit attendedthe Harcourt Butler Senior Secondary School, whichfunctioned from both Shimla and Delhi for six monthseach, and stood first in the 1948 secondary boardexamination as well as in the all-India entrancescholarship examination conducted by Delhi University.The latter result led to a fully funded scholarship whichenabled this member of a family of humble means toenrol at the elite St. Stephen’s College of Delhi for theB.Sc Physics Honours. He graduated in 1951, againtopping the list and securing a further full scholarship oftwo years to complete his M.Sc in 1953 from the same

12

university. Thus for five years he received his training inphysics under the tutelage of India’s stalwart physicsprofessors of the time such as D S Kothari and R CMajumdar. He then spent a year working as a researchfellow under Majumdar. In 1954 he won a Governmentof India full educational scholarship to go to Switzerlandfor his doctoral studies at the University of Zurich.

At Zurich, Pandit chose to conduct research in thenewly developing area of high energy particle physics.He was guided in this by the distinguished quantumtheorist Walter Heitler (author of the book Quantumtheory of radiation), working under a group headed byWolfgang Pauli. The latter impressed the young doctoralstudent so much as to leave in him a lifelong sense ofreverence for the great physicist. Pandit’s 1957 Ph.Dthesis comprised a number of both static and dynamicalcalculations in the pseudoscalar meson theory. Whilethe static ones computed the anomalous magneticmoments of nucleons, the dynamical ones addressedthe electron-proton scattering process at high energies.These calculations represented some of the firstinstances of the utilization of the covariant integrationmethod (applied with a cut-off) pioneered by Suraj Gupta.Also, while at Zurich, Pandit wrote a review on theproperties of linear vector spaces with indefinite metric.This subject was very timely in the wake of the use ofsuch spaces in the covariant handling of the gauge-fixing problem in quantum electrodynamics. A majoremphasis in the article was on the general lack ofreality of the eigenvalues of a hermitian matrix and theconsequent non-orthogonality of the correspondingeigenvectors in such spaces. All categories of thisbehaviour were in fact systematically studied in thispaper.

Returning to India in 1958, Pandit accepted HomiBhabha’s invitation to join the Tata Institute ofFundamental Research where he stayed till hisretirement in 1992. During his first few years at TIFR,he worked on the properties of K-mesons incollaboration with S N Biswas, proposing differentmethods for determining their relative parity with respectto other baryons. He did spend some time in 1960 asa post-doctoral visitor to the Istituto di Fisica at Padova,Italy, collaborating with Nicola Dallaporta to explore theinternal symmetry properties of baryons. These werestudied in relation not only to baryonic mass differencesbut also to the interactions of the baryons with π- andK-mesons.

The three years from 1963 to 1966 were spent on avisiting assignment at the University of Rochester wherehis initial work concerned various mathematicalproperties of the newly proposed internal symmetry groupSU(3). This was done in collaboration with N Mukundawho was then at Rochester. Together they developedcomputational techniques utilizing irreducible tensors of

the said group. Methods were found for determining thedirect product of two general irreducible representationsof SU(3) and for the computation of some of theassociated Clebsch–Gordon coefficients. In essence, aspinor calculus for SU(3) was developed. Pandit laterdid some important work with the famed Rochesterparticle theory group led by Robert Marshak. The mostnotable result, obtained together with Vishnu Mathurand Susumu Okubo, was a soft pion theorem (alsoderived at the same time and independently by CurtisCallan and Samuel Treiman of Princeton University) onthe weak three-body semileptonic decays of the strangeand charged pseudoscalar mesons K±. This theoremutilized both Richard Feynman’s partial conservationof the axial vector current hypothesis as well asthe SU(3) ⊗ SU(3) algebra of hadronic weak andelctromagnetic currents, proposed by Murray Gell-Mann.The result was hailed as a major breakthrough sinceneither perturbative field-theoretic nor S-matrix methods,developed earlier, could be applied successfully to sucha low energy weak process involving strongly interactingparticles. A new idea then came from Pandit andRiazuddin with a certain amount of prescience. Theyproposed the existence of a unitary transformation (ratherakin to the famous one due to Foldy and Wouthuysen)between two sets of quark fields that are now known ascurrent and constituent quarks. This was a precursor towhat later came to be known as the “Meloshtransformation”. Other interesting studies emerged fromcollaborations, of which Pandit was a member, pertainingto hyperon magnetic moments and to the massdifference between the short- and long-lived neutral kaons— calculated by current-algebra techniques. Becauseof all this success, he was invited to talk aboutapplications of the algebra of currents at the CoralGables conference of 1966. Given the fame he hadacquired at that time, Pandit could have easily accepteda job offer in US and stayed on. But a strong sense ofpatriotism and a commitment to build up a good schoolof researchers at TIFR made him return to his homeland.

Back at TIFR after 1966, Pandit along with his youngercolleagues started detailed studies of a variety of mesonicdecays based on underlying symmetry principles suchas the algebra of currents and asymptotic SU(3) aswell as chiral SU(3) ⊗ SU(3). These led to several veryinteresting results. For instance, the decay widths ofthe vector meson φ as well as of the nonstrange andstrange axial vector mesons A1 and KA respectivelywere computed, using the spectral function sum-rulesproposed by Steven Weinberg. Another set ofinvestigations led to a reasonably complete descriptionof the four-body semileptonic decay of the K-meson aswell as detailed studies of nonleptonic weak decays.The mid-sixties witnessed a real flowering of his creativetalents with several papers published in the prestigeousPhysical Review Letters and an invited review article(coauthored by Vishnu Mathur) in Advances in Particle

13

Physics (eds Rodney Cool and Robert Marshak). Quitea few of the results, with the derivation of which Panditwas involved, became benchmarks for the subsequentlyformulated theory of strong, weak and electromagneticparticle interactions, viz, the Standard Model, to agreewith. That agreement necessitated the development ofchiral perturbation theoretic techniques within the laterestablished framework of quantum chromodynamics andthe electroweak theory. One can say therefore thatthese results paved the way for the development ofthose techniques. Pandit’s lectures on the subject inthe 1967 Dalhousie summer school, which came outas one of the famous yellow reports of TIFR, convey tothe reader the sense of excitement in the field at thattime. It was largely on the strength of the above studiesthat Pandit was elected a Fellow of the Indian Academyof Sciences in 1976. Thereafter, his interests shifted tothe algebra of bilinear quark operators on the light-cone. Again, his clear, informative and pedagogicallectures on the subject in the Dalhousie summer schoolof 1973 were much appreciated by all those whoattended them.

Through the nineteen seventies and eighties, he andhis colleagues continued their studies on newlyemergent phenomena in particle physics, from the J/ψto neutral currents and heavier families, by usingsymmetry groups suchm as SU(4) and U(3)W. Whenthe new revolution in high energy physics moved thefocus of particle dynamics away from global symmetriesinto gauge symmetries and their characteristic features,such as screening and confinement, he kept track ofall those developments enthusiastically. He participatedin the 1982 international high energy physics conferencein Paris where the Standard Model was given a canonicalstatus. On his return, he gave a great colloquium onthe meeting in which he said that, as an interestedoutsider, he could talk about “vintage physicsdeliberations observed from a vantage point”.

Pandit was a wonderfully warm person and alwaysradiated bonhomie as well as goodwill. He was a spiritedteacher who infected his students with his boundlessenthusiasm communicated through the frequent wavingof his arms. On the other hand, he was an extremelynice individual, being gentle, considerate as well askind and helpful — especially to younger colleagues.He would go out of his way to persuade TIFR authoritiesto help new academic entrants into the Institute inmundane but essential matters such as housing ofwhich there was then an acute shortage. Whatever hefelt to be worthwhile was pushed with elan and verve byhim. He would never lose his composure in anydiscussion, however controversial, and his wide smilewas always a source of reassurance to his colleaguesand students alike. His vibrant presence in summerschools, that TIFR regularly organized over the course

of two decades, was a stimulus to the students. Thelong walks that one had with him at the venues of suchschools like Dalhousie, Mahabaleshwar and Panchganiare memorable for the wise words and insightful advicewhich came from him.

After his retirement from TIFR, he moved to Delhi andlived in his family house in Green Park. He was seenfrom time to time in various particle physics meetingsin Delhi. He participated with gusto in the theoreticalphysics symposium SUJAYATA, held at TIFR, in 1996to celebrate the golden jubilee of the Institute. In thelater part of his life his energy did turn inward, makinghim meditative and spiritual. But his enthusiasm andlove for life and his cheerful demeanour remained intact.At a meeting held at IIT, Delhi, to consider steps toattract motivated and good students to science, Panditwas heard saying “Show them that you enjoy doingscience and they will come automatically”. He had aserious heart attack about eight years ago, but didrebound to active life after that. The second heart attackproved fatal. He was supposed to speak in the nextacademic semester to students of IIT, Delhi on thehistory of quantum mechanics and his personalinteractions with quite a few Nobel laureates in thatarea. Unfortunately, things turned out otherwise. Panditleaves behind his wife Neeraja,two sons and a daughter.

Barry Ramachandra Rao(elected 1974) an eminentspace scientist and a teacherwho inspired generations ofphysics students at AndhraUniversity, passed away on 24September 2005 at hisresidence in Visakhapatnam.

Ramachandra Rao had a humble beginning, born on 21November 1922 into a fisherman family in Yalamanchili,a remote village in the Visakhapatnam district of AndhraPradesh. He had his schooling and intermediateeducation in Visakhapatnam. That he was an immenselytalented student was known quite early, but hisextraordinary gift came to be realized only after hejoined the B.Sc (Hons) physics course at AndhraUniversity. S Bhagavantham, greatly impressed by thetalented young Rao, had taken special interest in himand provided him financial support. Rao secured firstrank in B.Sc (Hons), not just of physics but alldisciplines combined, and was awarded the SripathiMedal in 1944. Even in M.Sc he stood first and wasawarded the Metcalf Medal in 1945. That was thebeginning of a brilliant research career.

Ramachandra Rao joined Andhra University in 1945 forhis D.Sc under the supervision of S Bhagavantham. Hewas supported through a laboratory demonstratorshipand later by a CSIR senior research fellowship. His

14

doctoral work was on diffraction of light by high frequencyultrasonic waves for which he was awarded D.Sc in1949. He continued this line of work which led to thediscovery that in the high frequency region the diffractionpattern follows the Bragg’s law. He and his studentsdeveloped new techniques for high precisionmeasurement of ultrasonic velocities in liquids andsolids. This pioneering research in ultrasonics led to aseries of seven papers, six of them in Nature.

In 1951, he was awarded a Commonwealth SeniorResearch Fellowship to work at CSIRO, Australia withD F Martyn, who was then involved in formulating theionospheric dynamo theory, now regarded as one of themost outstanding contributions in ionospheric physics.Martyn invited Rao to join him to work on this theory,but it would involve commitment to stay longer at CSIROthan what Rao intended. His primary objective was towork on experimental techniques that would help himstart a school of experimental space physics at AndhraUniversity. On return from Australia, he and his doctoralstudents started building an ionospheric researchlaboratory that over the years became one of the mostadvanced space science centres of international repute.There was tremendous diversity in the type ofinstruments that were designed and developed, takingthe laboratory to the forefront of radio and space researchin the country in a short time.

The first multi-frequency HF pulse radar in spaced-receiverconfiguration was developed by Rao’s group and acomprehensive study was made of ionospheric plasmadrifts over a low latitude. The group was also the firstto adopt advanced correlation techniques to derive thescale size and anisotropy characteristics of theirregularities along with their turbulent and steady driftvelocities. These were the first measurements basedon which the low latitude upper atmospheric winds werederived. The winds so derived formed the referenceagainst which the early theoretical models developedby the MIT group in USA were tested. Rao’s group alsomade extensive measurements on radio wave absorptionand polarization and the specialized instruments neededto perform these were built. The measurements weresuccessfully interpreted in terms of the magneto-ionictheory of Appleton–Hartree.

One of the most interesting phenomena of theionospheric F region plasma is the generation of a widespectrum of irregularities immediately followingsunset. The spread-F is the generic term by whichthese irregularities are commonly referred to, since theycause the spreading of the reflected signal recorded bya sweep frequency ionospheric sounder (Ionosonde).Some of the basic features of these irregularities,including the background plasma state conducive fortheir occurrence, were first reported by Rao and hisgroup. These early observations greatly helped in

understanding the plasma instability processes causingspread-F. This class of irregularities, as it turned out,came to be regarded as an important aspect of spaceweather with direct relevance to the GPS-basednavigation and satellite communication applications.These observations, covering a wide range of geophysicalconditions, still offer a valuable insight into themechanism of spread-F.

The early HF radars employed for ionospheric soundingwere all based on amplitude detection of theionospherically reflected radar signal. The signal phasemeasurement along with the amplitude provides a moresensitive method of studying ionospheric plasmadynamics. The first HF phase path sounder was designedand developed by the Andhra group and was used forextensive studies on low latitude gravity waves andplasma drifts. This group was also the first to designand develop two other major atmospheric soundingsystems, a meteor radar and a sodar. The meteor radaroffers a unique technique for wind and temperaturemeasurements in the lower thermosphere (~90–100 km),using radar backscatter from meteor-induced ionisationtrails. Meteor radar observations were also used tounderstand the formation of sporadic ionisation layersin the E region. The sodar was successfully operatedto study boundary layer processes, including pollutiondispersal. The current day HF Doppler radar, Dopplermeteor radar and Doppler sodar systems are but alogical evolution of those early systems developed atAndhra.

The Andhra group was also among the first to undertakethe important area of satellite radio beacon studies oftotal electron content (TEC) and scintillations. The radiobeacon studies now assume great significance underthe newly emerged discipline of ‘Space weather —science and applications’. Other original contributionsof the Andhra group include theoretical and modellingstudies of low latitude ionosphere and the application ofadvanced magneto-ionic theory of Sen-Weyller foraccurate interpretation of the radio wave absorptionmeasurements. In recognition of its excellence in spaceresearch, UGC elevated the space science laboratoryas an Advanced Centre for Space Research. Raoreceived the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award in 1965and was elected to all the three national academies.He also served as the President of the NationalAcademy of Sciences, Allahabad during 1981–82 andPresident of the Indian Science Congress during 1982–83. He was conferred D.Sc (Ch.c) by the AndhraUniversity in 1970.

In 1976 Rao was appointed the UGC Vice-Chairmanand served in this capacity for two terms (1976–82).During this period, he introduced some important reformsin the university system including the semester systemwith internal assessment, major changes in the structure

15

and course content at the master’s degree level, closerlinkages between academic institutions and nationallaboratories, establishment of centres of excellence inscience, university service and instrumentation centres(USICs) and state-of-the-art computer facilities at somemajor universities.

Rao was elected a member of the Rajya Sabha for aterm (1982–88) and also had the distinction of servingas Chairman of the National Fisheries Advisory Board,Chairman of the Educational Consultants of India Limitedand member of governing bodies of several R&Dorganizations, apart from serving on the top academicbodies of several universities. For all his accomplish-ments, he remained a very simple and unassumingperson. He leaves behind his wife Susheela Devi.

Amulya Kumar N Reddy(elected 1974) was born on 21October 1930 into a well-knownfamily of Bangalore. After hisschooling, he joined the CentralCollege in Bangalore to do hisB.Sc (Hons) in chemistry in1951 and M.Sc in physicalchemistry in 1954. He thenwent to London to do his Ph.Din applied physical chemistry

from the Imperial College in 1958. His academic carrierstarted as a lecturer in chemistry (1951–58) at theCentral College in Bangalore which was then affiliatedto the University of Mysore. In 1958 he joined the CentralElectrochemical Research Institute in Karaikudi as asenior scientific officer (1958–61). Between 1961 and1966 he had a stint at the University of Pennsylvaniaas a senior research associate at the John HarrisonLaboratory of Chemistry. Returning to India, he joinedthe Indian Institute of Science as an assistant professor(1966–70) and became a full professor in 1970 at theDepartment of Inorganic and Physical Chemistry.

During his active years of research in India onelectrochemistry, Reddy’s seminal contributions centredaround the structure and growth of electrodeposits,electrodeposition, corrosion, ellipsometric studies ofanodic films, thin layer electrochemistry, ion-exchangemembranes, and nerve conduction. He particularlylooked at electrodeposits, preferred orientations andtechniques of observations, especially in situ opticaltechniques for the study of anodic films. His popularmagnum opus “Modern electrochemistry” (in twovolumes) with J O M Bockris, reflects faithfully hiscommitments to the subject, his holistic approachto science (and life) and passion for lucid expositionof complex ideas. In his own words about the book:“the ecstasy consisted of my discovering theelectrochemistry for myself, being excited about what Ilearnt and communicating a fresh account of thelearning”.

The ground realities of doing research in an inter-disciplinary area like electrochemistry in the midst ofscarce funding of the early seventies, compounded bya highly competitive international scenario and a growingalienation with the then existing philosophy and approachof S&T in the country were some of the factors thatweaned Reddy away from the traditional confines ofelectrochemistry (and science, in general). This alsolaunched him as a valiant player in a much wider andmore meaningful (in his view) field of S&T choices insocial development.

He played a pioneering and major role in attracting theattention, and re-orienting the work, of advancedinstitutions of education, science and technology in India,and concerned workers/agencies abroad, to important,but mundane, topics such as rural energy consumptionpatterns and technologies, biogas technology, urbanconsumption of firewood, etc. He developed thedevelopment-focussed, end-use-oriented, service-directed(DEFENDUS) approach to environmentally concernedenergy analysis and planning in a developing countrycontext (at a time when such an approach had beenlargely ignored despite its overwhelming importance).He authored/co-authored widely-quoted papers on theimportance of biogas technology, rural energy, non-conventional energy sources for rural areas, urbanconsumption of firewood, the DEFENDUS approach toenvironmentally concerned energy analysis and planning.He directed or carried out research which have led toinnovations in biogas technology; the first insights intorural energy consumption patterns revealing the centralrole of biomass fuels such as firewood — the quantitiesinvolved, who collects them, and the effort involved —and the requirements of cooking energy; discoveringthe unexpectedly large role of firewood in the energyconsumption patterns of a modern metropolis likeBangalore; and formulating a DEFENDUS approach toan environmentally benign alternative electricity scenariofor Karnataka state in India. He conceived of an extensioncentre for the Indian Institute of Science to be locatedin rural setting to provide a mechanism for understandingrural problems from the perspective of rural people; andestablished such an extension centre in Ungra village,Kunigal Taluk, Tumkur District, Karnataka State, SouthIndia — the extension centre has been operating since1977. Following a survey of the energy consumptionpattern in Pura village in 1977, he designed andconstructed (in collaboration with P Rajabapaiah) acommunity biogas plant that is now supplying electricalillumination and piped water to the 90 houses in Pura,and developed a management system (in collaborationwith P Rajabapaiah and H I Somasekhar) to operateand maintain the Pura Rural Energy and Water SupplyUtility (REWSU) and handle its revenues andexpenditures — this management system has beentransferred to the Pura Grama Vikas Sabha which hasbeen successfully running the REWSU since 1989. He,

16

encouraged by the replication of the Pura REWSU in afew neighbouring villages, developed an implementationpackage and proposal for the replication of the Pura-type system in a 100 villages. He conceived andestablished in 1991 the International Energy Initiative —a developing-country-led, developing-country-locatedinternational NGO devoted to the promotion of efficientproduction and use of energy for sustainable developmentthrough the activities of information, training, analysis,advocacy and action.

Reddy was responsible for designing, founding andbuilding two innovative institutional mechanisms that havenow become models for generating and disseminatingtechnologies relevant to developmental problems: ASTRA(the Centre for the Application of Science and Technologyof the Indian Institute of Science and its ExtensionCentre at Ungra Village) devoted primarily to thegeneration of rural technologies (he was its convener till1983) and KSCST (the Karnataka State Council forScience and Technology) to catalyse the re-orientationof institutional efforts in Karnataka and to disseminatethe new technologies (he was its secretary from 1975).

He authored and co-authored several volumes on energyand science & technology. These includes “Science,technology and the environment — A reappraisal” (UNEP,1978), “The technological transformation of rural India”(Intermediate Technology, 1994), “Energy for asustainable world” (Wiley-Eastern, 1988), and“Renewable energy: sources for fuels and electricity”(Island Press, 1992). He also edited an Academypublished volume in Sadhana (Proc. in Engg. Sci.) on“Rural Technology” in 1980.

Amulya Reddy passed away in Bangalore on 7 May2006 leaving behind his wife Vimala and three daughters.

sex differentiation in Navicula halophila. He continuedhis work at the University Botany Laboratory until 1945when he was selected for a scholarship to study abroadby the Government of India. He proceeded to the UnitedKingdom and joined the University of Liverpool wherehe worked under J McLean Thompson and MargeryKnight. His investigations on the brown seaweedPelvetia canaliculata involved his working partly at theMarine Biological Station, Port Erin, Isle of Man. Hetook his Ph.D degree from the University of Liverpool in1948. He travelled widely in UK and Europe meetingand discussing with eminent phycologists of the timelike F E Fritsch, Feldmann and Boergesen.

Returning from UK in 1948, he was appointed as ascientist at the Central Marine Fisheries ResearchInstitute working at its centres in Cochin, Calicut andMadras. During this period he built up his reputation asan expert on marine phytoplankton on which hepublished a number of papers and wrote two volumeson the Dinophyceae of Indian Seas which form referenceworks of great importance.

For three years from 1961 to 1964 his services werelent to the Central Rice Research Institute at Cuttackto organize work on the use of nitrogen-fixing blue greenalgae in nitrogen deficient paddy field soils. In hischaracteristic thoroughness, he went about processingblue green algae to be used in rice cultivation andshowed tangible results. He was a pioneer in this field.Later he returned to the Central Marine FisheriesResearch Institute at Cochin where he served as thehead of the Marine Biology and Oceanography Divisionuntil 1971 when he opted for voluntary retirement fromservice to concentrate on his other interests.

Subrahmanyan was a pioneer in phytoplankton studiesof the Indian seas and was the first to draw attentionto the high fertility of the Arabian sea adjoining the westcoast of India. He elucidated many problems of fisheryinterest. He published more than fifty papers covering awide field in marine fisheries studies and has authoredtwo volumes on the Dinophyceae of the Indian shores.These, as well as his paper, a systematic account ofthe marine plankton diatoms of the Madras coastpublished in the Proceedings of the Indian Academy ofSciences, 1946, are still standard references for workerson the marine phytoplankton of the Indian seas.

He established two new genera, Hornellia with H. marinaas the type species and Protoeuglena with P. noctilucaeas the type and gave an account of their life history.Hornellia caused mortality among marine organisms ofthe coast of Malabar. Both Hornellia and Protoeuglenacaused a green discolouration of the sea. Besides thesetwo new genera, Subrahmanyan also described a newspecies of Ruttnera R Pringsheimi (Chrysophyceae).

He is survived by his wife Parvathi, a son and fourdaughters.

Ramakrishnan Subrah-manyan (elected 1956), aneminent phycologist and anexpert on marinephytoplankton, breathed his laston 5 March 2006, after aprolonged illness. He was bornon 31 January 1919 atPazhanayur in Trichur in Kerala.He had a brilliant academiccareer in school and college

and took his B.Sc degree in Botany from the MadrasChristian College in 1939 with a I class I rank. He wasawarded a research scholarship by the University ofMadras to work under the guidance of M O P Iyengarat the University Botany Laboratory (now Centre ofAdvanced Study in Botany) and obtained the M.Scdegree in 1943. His work on the cytology and life historyof diatoms was acclaimed as path breaking. Onenotable contribution was his discovery of an autonomoussexual reproduction leading to auxospore formation inCyclotella meneghiniana. Another was with reference to