Ram Ramaswamy, Author at And then...

A bunch of jolly good Fellows

The existence of several Academies of Science in India has frequently been commented upon, mainly with regard to why, for instance, there are three and not just one. The discourse does not take long to descend into a discussion of the circumstances, both personal and professional, that gave rise to these three: The Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore, The Indian National Science Academy, New Delhi, and the National Academy of Science (India), Allahabad.

Be that as it may, for a scientist, election to any of these academies is a matter of honour, as is the election to other academies of science and technology, agriculture, engineering, medicine and so on.

In our state, the Andhra Pradesh Akademi of Sciences is one such, and this year, two of our colleagues have been elected to their Fellowship: Arun Agarwal and Ashwini Nangia, for services to the sciences…

INSA, the Indian National Science Academy has elected Aparna Dutta Gupta (for her original contributions to the area of hexamerin receptors and their role in juvenile hormone action in insects) and V Suresh (for outstanding contributions to quadratic forms and algebraic geometry. The most impressive results of Suresh include the proof of a long standing conjecture on the value of the u-invariant of the function field of a curve over a local field and establishing the local-global principle for a wide class of homogeneous spaces of algebraic groups. His work has opened up new avenues of research and inspired leading mathematicians in the area.)

IASc, the Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore has elected M Durgaprasad of the School of Chemistry for his contributions to theoretical chemistry, while NASI the National Academy of Sciences, Allahabad has elected S Dayananda (for his contributions in microbial remediation of organophosphate insecticides by novel genes from microbes), P B Kirthi and Venapally Suresh.

All in all, our colleagues have made us proud, by underscoring the importance of original research, and by providing a set of standards of achievement that all of us can aspire to. Further, they remind us that peer recognition is invaluable, both for validation of the (often lonely and difficult) choices we make in our careers and in our research, and for establishing new benchmarks for work and performance. In both these aspects, the research that has been carried out at the University has been of the highest quality, setting world standards in many cases, and helping us to stand quite apart from the herd…

The seven named here join many others in our University who have been recognized by INSA, IASc and NASI- and of course other academies, The Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE), the National Academy of Agricultural Sciences (NAAS), the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World (twas), the Royal Society (London) and others*. To all of them, Bravo!

* This information is all I have been able to get so far… Please let me know about omissions if any- I will be glad to add names and fellowships.

Physics***

The N. S. Satya Murthy Memorial Award in Physics for young scientists was instituted in the memory of late, Dr. N. S. Sathya Murthy in the year 1992, by his colleagues at Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Mumbai. This is given by Indian Physics Association to a scientist below the age of 35 years, in recognition of outstanding contributions to the growth of Physics in India by way of research, applications and other activities. The selection of the awardee is made by a committee constituted by the executive committee of IPA. The recipient of this award should have carried out a major part of the reported work within India. This year’s award, which will formally be given on 12 January, goes to our colleague in the School of Physics, Surajit Dhara who works in the area of liquid crystals. The specific work that is being cited is his fundamental contributions on the structure property correlation in unconventional liquid crystals, and the discovery of discontinuous anchoring transition and its applications.

Another piece of good news to share is that our colleague Ganapathy Vaitheeswaran in ACRHEM has been elected as Associate Fellow in Physical Sciences for the year 2011 by the Andhra Pradesh Academy of Sciences. Dr Vaitheeswaran works in the general area of theoretical condensed matter physics.

Earlier, on the 19th of December 2011, the University awarded the D. Sc. (honoris causa) to Professor Girish Agarwal, presently of Oklahoma State University, Stillwater and earlier our colleague, from 1977 to 1995. Writing about him some years ago, his colleagues in the School of Physics had this to say: Professor Girish Saran Agarwal, the founder Dean of School of Physics, is one of the outstanding scientists of India, who has elevated quantum optics research in India on par with the top international levels. A product of the Mecca of optics, the University of Rochester, he dedicated himself to the growth of indian science, ﬁrst as the founder Dean of School of Physics, University of Hyderabad (UH), and then as the Director of Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad. His contributions to quantum and nonlinear optics span every conceivable area ranging from near-ﬁeld optics to EIT-assisted giant nonlinearities, from cavity QED to quantum Information, from optical bistability to tests of non-classicality. Such a broad spectrum is truly rare even in the international context.

Though he was trained as a theoretician, his understanding of modern sophisticated experiments is remarkable. His many collaborative papers with the groups of Prof. Walther and Prof. Boyd speak for that. That he was much ahead of his time is evidenced by many of his path-breaking theoretical predictions which were veriﬁed much later by other experimental groups. His discoveries have frequently led to new directions of research. A long list of collaborators from all over the world who are themselves eminent scientists proves the truly global nature of his science.

The immense contributions of Prof. Agarwal have been recognized: he has received all the major awards of India for scientiﬁc research, including the S S Bhatnagar award and many international recognitions. At UoH he was the ﬁrst to attract some major international awards like the Max Born Prize of the Optical Society of America and the Physics prize of the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World, the Max Born Award, and the Einstein Medal of the Optical Society of America. He was also the ﬁrst at our University to be honored by the American Physical Society by its Fellowship. Very recently he was recognized by the University of Liege with the award of the honoris causa.

In view of his outstanding contributions to optical sciences and quantum optics and his service to the scientiﬁc community, the University of Hyderabad is honoured to award Professor Agarwal the D. Sc. (hon. caus.).

Hearty congratulations to all!

Campus Walkabout

What: A walk around the periphery of the campus of the University of Hyderabad.

When: 1 January 2012, 8:30 am

Where: Startoff at the Main Gate, moving counterclockwise (toward Gopanpally… )

We’ll walk for a few hours- go as far as possible- and will be led by Prof. A C Narayana of UCESS, the University Engineer and others. Please bring along (a) water for yourself, (b) sunscreen + hat if you need it, (c) friends.

The idea is to get acquainted with the campus- too many of us know very little about the place, the extent of the land that remains, and just what has been happening to it…

Walkabout refers to a rite of passage during which male Australian Aborigines would undergo a journey during adolescence and live in the wilderness for a period as long as six months when they would trace the paths or “songlines” that their people’s ceremonial ancestors took, and imitate, in a fashion, their heroic deeds. The songline here is the path along Gurbaksh Singh Wall, going past the UoH menhir where our prehistoric ancestors lived.

Do come.

It is a great way to welcome in the new year! Happy 2012!!

PS: There will be those for whom 8:30 am is way too early! Come by the Lake View Guest house between 4:00 and 6:00 in the evening then, just to meet and have a cup of tea together…

Thinking it through

As education gets increasingly professionalized and compartmentalized, it often takes great effort to argue for a generalist approach. Very serious and well-meaning educationists will make a strong case for focussed teaching within a curriculum- Course A to follow Course B, dropping Course C because that can be picked up easily and introducing Course D because thats “hot” these days, and so on. (Depending on the discipline and the degree, you can easily put in appropriate names for A, B, C, and D.)

With the changing landscape of education, its sometimes worth thinking whether there is enough freedom of choice in our programs, and whether some students might benefit from a more generalist framework where less would be prescribed (or proscribed, for that matter) and the student could more actively participate in her or his own curriculum.

I can’t see that happening in a hurry, but I think that the higher education scenario is changing sufficiently that one must give this some serious consideration. Two immediate catalysts for the present observation were a visit by two students of the present first year batch in the CIS, and a podcast I heard.

First the students. Basically they came to share their observations that when they compared the curriculum of the five-year program at UoH with that at other institutions where there are similar five-year programs, ours seemed to be much simpler and not really challenging. In some sense, this is not too surprising given that the IISERs and other institutions cater to smaller numbers and offer a specialized if limited smörgåsbord of curricular possibilities. But I think we should pay some heed to a serious comment from the end-users, so to speak. Our courses should be accessible, but not at the cost of making them not challenging enough. (As Einstein famously said, “Make things as simple as possible, but not simpler.” ) Having been in a similar boat many years ago, another case of syllabus envy I guess, I tried to tell the lads to also take responsibility for their own education and learn from their peers across the country- but that is easier said than done. So should our curriculum be deeper or wider? And how can we tailor it to those who want to go faster? Or, for that matter, slower?

I was mulling over this and related questions when I heard an interview with philosopher Tim Crane of Cambridge University on whether animals (other than humans) have minds? (This is one of the brilliant Philosophy Bites podcasts by David Edmonds and Nigel Warburton.) The discussion was on how philosophers think we think, on how we define thinking, consciousness, and so on, and whether animals have “a theory of mind” and how this relates to our own theory of mind.

One thing that struck me- enough that I came back to this interview several times- was the deep connection between the fact of having language and the ability to imagine having a mind. Crane says- and I paraphrase- that what sets apart human thought from animal thought is our ability to think about things without thinking about their practical consequences. The pursuit of truth for its own sake is a characteristic of human thinking and, further, that it is an evolutionary adaptation that gave us the ability to learn things without there having to be an immediate use. And that this gave us an enormous advantage in the development of culture.

This is worth thinking about. Some laterality, even in structured programs of instruction, is clearly worth having, perhaps at the cost of some depth. And if this can bring about a culture of thinking, so much the better. But above all, the link is language.

Elsewhere in the interview Crane has occasion to say that philosophy starts at the boundaries of science- in this particular case, our inability to know how or whether animals think leads us to examine more closely our own concepts of belief and thought.

And this is a good thing to remember, that not only are the boundaries among the sciences blurred, at some level, even the boundary between the sciences and philosophy is. (Not for nothing was the study of science termed natural philosophy in earlier days!) What we have at the UoH is the possibility of bringing to our integrated programs of study in the CIS a diversity that only a University can provide. This is an advantage we should exploit to its fullest.

Rock(et)star

A few days ago, at the Lead India 2020:A Vision for the New Millennium programme I had a chance to see firsthand the power of our ex-President, A. P. J. Abdul Kalam to inspire.

His message is a simple one, and all the more attractive for that. A developed India by 2020, or even earlier, is not a dream, he says. It need not be a mere vision in the minds of many Indians. It is a mission we can all take up and succeed. Following the UNDP lead of putting people at the center of the development and keeping in perspective that 54% of our population is youth, Prof. N. B Sudershan Acharya integrated Dr. Kalam’s ideals, vision and mission and created a training program for the youth titled Aap Badho Desh Ko Bhadao the fundamental philosophy being Individual development leads to National Development.

Lead India 2020 Foundation, is now on the path of carrying the torch forward, focused on igniting and channelizing hidden potential in our youth. Most of the training is delivered to the students by their peers, Change Agents, who form the Lead India National Club (LINC) in their respective schools. Guided by a 10-point oath designed by Dr. Kalam, the Change Agents embrace a new way of living. Graduates of Lead India 2020 training program set high goals in life and become Change Agents to change society and environment around them. The training was first delivered to 6,000 tribal students in remote villages and then to 25,000 tribal students in the next two years. Later on mass transformation in high school students was accomplished with over 1 lakh students participating in Medak and over 2 lakh students in Karimnagar. (The above paragraphs are taken from their website.)

What is striking about the photograph I took from the dais is not the image of Dr Kalam himself- he can be recognized instantly, and the pose is now characteristic- but the look on those who are looking at him, riveted by what he is saying…The 10 point oath is a simple formula that combines a set of instructions for living that essentially nobody can argue with, and yet its simplicity appeals… Here they are (simplified even more):

I will pursue my education or my work with dedication.
I will work to eradicate illiteracy.
I will work for reforestation.
I will work towards reducing social evils.
I will constantly endeavour to remove the pain of my suffering brethren.
I will not support any discrimination
I will be honest and will endeavour to make a corruption-free society.
I will strive to become an enlightened person.
I will be sensitive to the needs of the differently abled.
I will celebrate the success of my country and my people with pride.

It is difficult to not be impressed. Mobilizing such large numbers is not easily done, and the admiration that these students have for Dr Kalam is genuine and moreover appears to serve genuinely to inspire. Earlier, when writing about the DST’s INSPIRE program I had said that in the end our salvation will be in numbers, and the numbers are here for the asking. There is a large number of our youth who can see that the only way forward is to lead from the front, to be the change, however clichéd that may sound. Seeing school after school send up children who had clearly overcome several hurdles, both social and personal, to come this far, the event was not just impressive, it was humbling.

This is the vanguard of LEAD India 2020, and in all likelihood, the vanguard of the new India.

O segundo pômfret

Many moons ago I found myself in the erstwhile Portuguese enclave of Daman, out for the weekend. In those days- and perhaps even now- Daman (and Diu) offered a variety of forbidden fruits to adjacent (and dry) Gujarat. The Union Territory also had a reputation of sorts- people would casually point out smugglers’ houses that just seemed to be everywhere. Added to which there was a pervading air of the exotic: families that spoke only Gujarati and Portuguese, the colonial architecture, the Avenidas, the Alamedas, crossing the Daman Ganga river that separates Nani Daman from Moti Daman standing in a boat… and all within a few hours of the TIFR, Mumbai where I was then a fidgety Visiting Fellow.

At dinner one night I found the fried pomfret that I had ordered to be exceptionally good. I’m not much of a foodie, but I recall it was excellent, good enough that I ordered another. But… the second pomfret just did not taste as good.

I’ve often wondered why. Perhaps the two fish differed in quality… Maybe the first was not as good as I thought it was in the first place… Maybe the first took the edge off the hunger, and so the second just did not seem as good… Maybe different cooks… Do the taste buds change after the first bite… Who knows, but I do recall both emotions clearly, the pleasure of the first and the disappointment of the second. I guess this was just my personal rediscovery of Heraclitus, that you cannot step into the same river twice…

Ebrahim Alkazi, D. Litt. (hon. caus.)

On the 14th of this month, December 2011, the University of Hyderabad will award Ebrahim Alkazi the degree of D. Litt. (honoris causa) at a brief ceremony at the IIC in New Delhi. Under normal circumstances we would have preferred to have given it at our convocation in Hyderabad, but that is not to be.

Our University decided to award him the degree a few years ago, and unfortunately it has taken us this long to get around to it. Nevertheless, on the 14th following the ceremony there will be a panel discussion on Theatre Pedagogy in India: Retrospect & Prospect chaired by Professor Mohan Maharishi, with Anuradha Kapoor, Keval Arora, Maya Rao and Shantanu Bose speaking.

Prof. Ananthakrishna of the SN School writes: Born in Pune in 1925, Ebrahim Alkazi had his initial training in theatre at Sultan ‘Bobby’ Padamsee’s English-language theatre company, Theatre Group in Mumbai. In 1947 he went to England to study art but joined in Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, London to get trained in theatre. Being a winner of the BBC broadcasting award in 1950 and having recognition from British Drama League for his outstanding work, he was offered several opportunities in theatre in London, but he refused these and returned to India where he worked with the Theatre Group from 1950 to 1954, and later formed his own, independent, Theatre Unit in 1954.

Though all the productions carried out under the Theatre Unit were in English, the directorial impulses were relevant to Indian context and with a new vibrancy in performance in terms of visual language, energy, perfection and design. Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex (1954), Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral (1955), Anouilh’s Antigone (1957) and Euripides’ Medea (1960) were the major plays directed by Alkazi with Theatre Unit. He set up a small performance space on the terrace of his apartment with 150 seat capacity to stage the plays of Theatre Unit. To generate theatre literacy and to disseminate new work and trends in contemporary theatre, he founded the monthly ‘Theatre Unit Bulletin’ in 1953 which featured new works in India and abroad, articles and reviews on theatre. In addition to this he started the first acting school in Mumbai, the School of Dramatic Arts, later becoming the principal of Bombay’s Natya Academy.

Alkazi was the founder director of NSD, the National School of Drama, in 1962 and continued as director till 1977. He converted the diploma programme in to a three year course introducing rigorous practice schedules along with equal intellectual inputs. By insisting that all elements of theatre should be seriously considered in order to achieve perfection, through his meticulous research he created true professional standards. Given his proficiency in the fine arts and literature, he emphasised the importance of all components of theatre. The pedagogy he evolved in the National School of Drama was the first of its kind in India, comprehensive and with a scientific approach. He built up the National School of Drama, established its repertory company in 1964 to give its graduates a working space and also as a disseminating unit for meaningful theatre. The productions in NSD during his time created a tremendous impact in Indian theatre.

His contribution to Indian theatre is multifold; he shaped the philosophy of theatre training in NSD, and this later became a model for many other institutions; his productions Ashad ka ek Din, Andha Yug and Tughlak were landmark events in Indian theatre that used unconventional spaces in an innovative manner. The University is very honoured to be able to include Ebrahim Alkazi in our list of honoris causa doctorates.

An idea needs propagation…

… as much as a plant needs watering.

That quote- and the accompanying photograph- is on the website of Columbia University where Bhimrao Ambedkar (1891–1956) obtained his MA in 1915, the Ph D in 1927 and the LLD (honoris causa) in 1952 for his service as “a great social reformer and a valiant upholder of human rights.“

Today is the 55th Mahaparinirvan Divas, the anniversary of his passing away, and a good day for us all at the University to remember him and what he stood for.

IDPwD

Today, 3 December, is the United Nations International Day of Persons with Disabilities. The Day aims to promote better understanding of disability issues with a focus on the rights of persons with disabilities and gains to be derived from the integration of persons with disabilities in every aspect of the political, social, economic and cultural life of their communities.

Later this month, Shivani Gupta of Access Ability and her team will be on our campus to undertake a complete Disability Audit of all the buildings, roads and other facilities. The Dean of Students Welfare’s office has been coordinating this effort, and our aim is to make as much of the campus accessible to persons with disabilities as possible, and to work for a full access in the future. This means ramps and elevators where possible, but also more.

One other news that is appropriate to share today is that the State Bank of India has very recently given us a 32 seater bus for the campus, specially designed to be accessible to persons with disabilities. This will be for in-campus transport and will run as a shuttle. The bus is not yet on our campus- there is some body work needed on it- but shall be here soon. A great gesture on the part of SBI– many thanks to them on behalf of all of us!

On Inspiration

The Department of Science and Technology (DST) has the brilliantly named INnovation in Science Pursuit for Inspired REsearch programme, INSPIRE. We have, as a University, benefited from it, notably in the CIS where a number of our integrated MSc students are recipients of fellowships. As the INSPIRE-DST website puts it, the basic objective of INSPIRE would be to communicate to the youth population of the country the excitements of creative pursuit of science and attract talent to the study of science at an early stage and build the required critical human resource pool for strengthening and expanding the Science & Technology system and R&D base.

The three components of the program are

SEATS: Scheme for Early Attraction of Talent
SHE: Scholarship for Higher Education
AORC: Assured Opportunity for Research Careers

and the numbers they hope to reach is impressive. One million- 10,00,000 – in SEATS, 10,000 each year in SHE, and an unspecified number of doctoral fellowships in the AORC. There has been nothing like it in the country, and one can only hope that this will make a difference.

The falling numbers in enrollment in the sciences has been a matter of concern, particularly to the Academies of Science in the country for a while. (There are 3 Academies of Science, the Indian Academy of Sciences, the Indian National Science Academy, and the National Academy of Sciences, in addition to an Academy of Engineering, one of Agriculture, and one of Medicine). The Academies have undertaken a number of measures- particularly their Summer Research Fellowships, where undergraduate students and College teachers can spend a summer in a laboratory of their choice. Nevertheless, in terms of reach, INSPIRE both aspires differently and does it differently- the numbers are larger, and the choice is greater.

One initiative that the Indian Academy of Sciences undertook was to ask another question, why are there so few women who take up a career in science. Around 2005 they set up the Women in Science panel to look into this question, as well as into other related questions. The panel did a number of things- one being a survey that asked how many women did a Ph D but then chose not to pursue a career, and why they made that choice. Another was to establish a mentorship programme- having a number of successful women scientists talk to undergraduate women science students. A third was to bring out a set of books in which women scientists of some accomplishment spoke of their lives, what helped them, and what did not.

As a member of the panel, I was involved in editing the book, Lilavati’s Daughters: The Women Scientists of India that came out in 2008. And last week, a follow up to that book, The Girl’s Guide to a Life in Science (edited by Rohini Godbole, Mandakini Dubey and myself) was released at the annual meeting of the Indian Academy of Sciences in Ahmedabad. The blurb of the book, that has been published by the Academy and Zubaan Books (New Delhi) says

Inspiring, informative, ingenious…meet twenty-five of India’s most celebrated female scientists. From astrophysics to zoology, learn what it takes to make a career in science. What led them to choose their particular field? Who encouraged them? What were their struggles? What are their sources of inspiration? What are the key questions at the cutting edge of modern research? Why choose a life in science at all? From astrophysics to zoology, learn what it takes to make a career in science.

The idea in putting together these essays by and about working women scientists in India was to try to provide inspiration by having role models who were local, and who were in a sense “within reach” rather than to always try to derive inspiration from those who were at lofty Nobelian heights. And to provide reassurance to both the young women and their parents that a career in science was do-able, fulfilling, and enriching in as many ways as any other career can be.

Numbers. In the end, that is going to be our only salvation and that would be the best result of our “demographic dividend”. We need to inspire as many young people as possible to take up science as a way of life- whether they make it a career or not- if we are to seed innovation, to become self sufficient in intellectual capital. And all measures that we can take towards this path are, I guess, useful.