Residence of an accomplished bengalurian.
— G V Pavan Kumar (@Pavan_KumarGV) December 6, 2023
1/n pic.twitter.com/bRFEwK5z6G
Category: History
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John Michell and ‘dark stars’
November 1783,
John Michell published a paper on ‘dark stars’.
This was kind of a preamble to the concept of black holes & interestingly, was based on Newton’s corpuscular theory of light and the slowing down of light due to gravity!See this article for details:
Part of the original paper (the beginning) is reproduced below :
The first few lines of Michell’s 24-page paper elaborate on his idea. As you may observe, he makes a remarkable connection between the velocity of light and the measures related to stars (distance, magnitude, etc.)
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Kumar Patel and CO2 laser- Baramati-Pune to Bell Labs
Happy Deepavali: let’s celebrate (laser) light! Did you know there is a connection b/w Baramati, Pune city & the first-ever CO2 lasers? Kumar Patel, the inventor of one of the most powerful lasers, was born in Baramati & did his BE at the College of Engineering, Pune!
Chandra Kumar Naranbhai Patel had an illustrious career. From Pune, he moved to Stanford University for his PhD and then worked at Bell Labs, where he created his CO2 laser. See him describe the invention:
In Nov 1964 (around the time of the Diwali festival :)), he published his invention: https://journals.aps.org/pr/abstract/10.1103/PhysRev.136.A1187
Wikipedia has a good profile of his work, including a video :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._Kumar_N._Patel
Kumar Patel went on to win many laurels, including US President’s National Medal of Science. https://www.nsf.gov/od/nms/recip_details.jsp?recip_id=270
Kumar was a rare engineering scientist who also served as the president of the American Physical Society in 1995.
https://www.aps.org/about/governance/presidents.cfm
One of the reasons to celebrate Diwali is the move from darkness(ignorance) to light(knowledge). I hope humanity moves toward peace, knowledge and harmony with nature guided by compassion and science. Baramati-born Kumar Patel has shown us one of the ways.
Kannada – ನಿಮಗೆಲ್ಲರಿಗೂ ದೀಪಾವಳಿಯ ಶುಭಾಶಯಗಳು
Marathi – तुम्हा सर्वांना दीपावलीच्या हार्दिक शुभेच्छा
Sanskrit – सर्वेभ्यः दीपावली शुभकामना
Hindi – आप सभी को दीपावली की शुभकामनाएँ
I wish you all a happy Deepavali.
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Curie and Raman – born on this day
Marie Curie (7 November 1867 – 4 July 1934) and CV Raman (7 November 1888 – 21 November 1970) were born on this day. Both were extraordinary scientists and strong characters.
Marie Curie led an extraordinary life, and her dedication to science was unparalleled. She led a tough life in a male-dominated society and became a great scientist. Previously, I have written about her in one of my blogs on lab writing:
https://historyofscience.in/2018/11/11/expression-as-exploration/CV Raman was an outstanding experimentalist and trained many students. He had his faults but led an astonishing scientific life, and linked are a couple of talks on his scientific biography that I have given:https://historyofscience.in/2022/03/18/talks-on-c-v-raman-youtube-links/
Scientists are human beings. For me, understanding their scientific life history in the context of their society & environment is fascinating. There is always something to learn from their past, not only from their achievements but also from their mistakes.
Keeps me humble!
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Teaching LASERs – snapshots
Today, I will be teaching the origins of LASERs in my optics class. Some of the content may interest science enthusiasts here. I present some snapshots from my notes. As expected, it starts with Einstein introducing his A and B coefficients and the stimulated emission.
He introduced them in a paper written in German: Einstein, A. (1916). “Strahlungs-Emission und -Absorption nach der Quantentheorie”. Verhandlungen der Deutschen Physikalischen Gesellschaft. 18: 318–323.
The English translation of the paper: “Volume 6: The Berlin Years: Writings, 1914-1917 (English Translation Supplement) Page 212 (224 of 462).” Accessed November 3, 2023. https://einsteinpapers.press.princeton.edu/vol6-trans/224.
Under thermodynamic equilibrium, the detailed balance gives us the connection between the coefficients…and amplification and stimulated emission of radiation become a measurable prospect.
The pic shows the leading characters behind the invention of the Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation (LASER) Charles Townes was the intellectual pioneer behind microwave variety… and Maiman….the freak behind the optical version..
The history of the invention is fascinating and dramatic. I did a podcast on this a few months ago. Check it out..
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Twitter thread on Chandra
Today is Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar’s birthday. I did a Twitter/X thread on him with several links :
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Why study history?
Recently, I came across a short but interesting book:
Bailyn, Bernard. On the Teaching and Writing of History: Responses to a Series of Questions. UPNE, 1994.
On page 12, there is an interesting discussion on why one should study history, both at the level of an individual and the collective. Below, I reproduce a paragraph related to this.
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2023 Nobel in Sciences – A few observations and questions
One of the interesting aspects of the Nobel Prize in Sciences this time is that all the 8 laureates are experimentalists. This is not to underplay the contribution of theoreticians but to emphasize the point that experimental observations are central to the progress of sciences and follow-up technology. Also note that many of these laureates were equally well-versed in theoretical ideas, and hence were able to connect the abstract to the real. An effective way to do science.
Another aspect is that all the experimentalists are strongly anchored in the West. They have performed all their work in an ecosystem that has supported their efforts, even when their ideas were not well known. A case in point is Katalin Karikó (one of the medicine/physiology laureates). Although U Penn treated her badly, she was still able to sustain her research thanks to the research-driven business ecosystem in the West, including the USA and Germany, where she could establish herself in the biotech research industry. This means the Western research ecosystem, including its businesses, was open enough to allow someone who was almost discarded by the US academic system. Karikó’s is a great story, but we must not forget that eventually, the system in which she worked recognized her contribution.
Now, some things to ponder – what if Karikó had moved to a place such as India? Could she have survived and thrived in our research ecosystem? If she had moved, was our academic and market ecosystem open to welcome her, take her expertise, and utilize it effectively? Answers to these questions are not straightforward but may indicate where we are as a research ecosystem.
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2023 Nobel in Physics – Initial thoughts
One should not be surprised nowadays if a Nobel prize in physics goes to something related to light. As a person working in optics and light-matter interaction, I welcome any recognition of one of the most profound aspects of nature: light. This time, the prize has gone to some great experimental effort dating back to the late 1980s to early 2000s when amazing progress was made in three aspects related to the prize: a) higher harmonic generation of light in rare gases, b) production of a train of attosecond light pulses, and c) eventually production of single attosecond light pulses that can interact with matter, especially electrons in matter. Such an interaction can lead to the mapping of dynamics of quantum entities such as electrons and will have far-reaching consequences in probing the internal degrees of molecules and atoms. The scientific information published by the Nobel Committee has wonderful illustrations and is worth reading.
This time, the Nobel Prize website has published a fantastic set of illustrations to convey the relevance of the research. The above one shows the spectrum of temporal scales. It elegantly illustrates the breadth of the scale – attosecond to heartbeat:: Heartbeat to the age of the universe.. Oh, how beautiful science is!
Via Twitter, thanks to a student who was attending a lecture by Anne (one of the Nobel laureates), we got to see continuing her lecture even after a Nobel announcement. Now that is the spirit of academics!
This is the fundamental paper that triggered higher harmonic generation in gases and laid the foundation for attosecond pulse generation. of today, the impact factor of this journal is 1.6. The impact is not proportional to the impact factor of a journal
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अहिंसा, सत्याग्रह
अहिंसा, सत्याग्रह
Gandhi lived a life in pursuit of non-violence and truth (the meaning of the above two words in Devanagari script).
The beauty of Gandhi’s life is his astonishing honesty. You can still disagree with him on certain aspects of his politics, including economics, and yet engage with his ideas and learn something deep. If you observe his writings, he was always engaging in disagreement and yet never dismissive of an opposing idea. He subjected himself to scrutiny of his character and yet emerged with a deeper meaning of flaws and self-introspection. Talk about confidence!
This is perhaps the hallmark of his education. A lesson he took not only as a teacher but also as a student of life.
Probably Gandhi’s most innovative idea was to recognize the deep philosophical and human aspects of life and incorporate them into his work. He practiced what he preached, which is a rarity. Einstein realized this very early (see the quote).
The two ideas mentioned at the beginning have stood the test of time, and I think they will continue to serve as benchmarks of human intellectual life. That is the lesson I take away from his life.
Long live अहिंसा and सत्याग्रह…