Below are ‘locations of some of the optical and infrared observatories marked on the Indian map’.
from: Narendranath, Shyama, Shashikiran Ganesh, Dipen Sahu, et al. 2025. “Solar System Research Prospects for the Decade and Beyond.” Journal of Astrophysics and Astronomy 46 (2): 34. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12036-025-10060-0.
Below is a small experiment with ChatGPT (GPT-4o, which is OpenAI’s most advanced model as of July 2025).
I asked for thoughts (from authentic sources) from Indian writers on the nature of the writing process (handwriting vs typewriting).
It confidently gave me quotations from Rabindranath Tagore, R.K. Narayan and U.R. Ananthmurthy. I was intrigued, and below is my conversation:
me: list the quotes from Indian writers above and give the exact sources
Chatgpt: I couldn’t find reputable sources for the exact quotes I previously suggested by Indian writers—so it’s safer to reconsider them.
This is something I have been observing with LLM chatboxes, especially when it comes to the sources that may not be mainstream. One may even say it is hallucinating, but after enquiring further, it said:
The quotes I initially provided appear to be popular paraphrases or second-hand interpretations, but none could be verified in primary texts or reliable interviews.
Then, it asked me if I wanted to use authentic sources to be presented to corroborate the initially mentioned sources. I said yes, and below was its reply:
Here are verified quotes from Rabindranath Tagore, with clear attributions to reliable sources—unfortunately, I couldn’t locate authenticated quotes for other Indian writers on writing methods
The quotes that it gave were peripheral to my initial question. It identified two to three quotations, but none of them were directly connected to my initial query.
There may be at least 2 hypotheses that I can draw from this, which need further testing:
I know these questions are not trivial to answer, but for LLM chatboxes to be authentic, they need to address questions with proper citations. I know some of them are trying to do that (eg, perplexity AI), but I find the links it provides for certain focused questions are not up to the mark.
My inference:
From 15th to 18th June 2025, I attended a focused meeting called ConForce.
The location was at an interesting place: Casuarina Resort Park- Kurunji, which is about 70 km from Pune. It was a scenic and raw place, with an amazing landscape. The resort facilities were ok with limited facilities, but the landscape was just breathtaking. It rained almost all the time, but it created a wonderful visual across the horizon with lush green patches of mountains and grey clouds (see image).
The main theme of the meeting was related to force spectroscopy, with a greater tilt towards biophysical applications. I spoke in the optical tweezers section and enjoyed the discussion with various participants and speakers. Specifically, I presented some of our recent, unpublished work on optical binding and its optical perturbation.
There are several models for using YouTube. One of them is to use it as a substitute for television and media outlets. This is where the number of views, subscriptions, and reach becomes important.
Another model is to harness YouTube as an archival source that is open to the public. This is one of the crucial elements of a platform that is easily accessible and, importantly, searchable. Such a platform becomes a repository for many informal academic discussions and interactions.
The archive model is an important category, especially if there is no need to generate revenue from the content deposited on the platform. A crucial aspect is that it can be accessed across the world and, in that sense, represents truly open-access content without paywalls, publication charges or subscriptions. Therefore, I am glad to see that many Indian academic programs, including NPTEL, ICTS, Science Activity Center/Media Center at IISER-Pune and many others are utilizing platforms such as YouTube to post their lectures and talks. Also, many individual academics in India are gradually using YouTube to discuss their work, in the context of research, teaching and entrepreneurship.
This development is slowly turning out to be an invaluable resource that can reach a large audience. Although YouTube is one of the most well-known platforms, many other platforms in the context of social media can also be tapped to spread knowledge. Given their reach and simplicity of use, both for creators and users, these tools become important in a vast country such as India.
As audio-visual public platforms join hands with artificial intelligence tools, they can positively (hopefully) affect how people, especially students, consume educational content. Going forward, I anticipate language translation through direct dubbing to be a game-changer. It could attract many new viewers who have been hesitant to watch technical content simply because it was in a foreign language. Of course, on these platforms, the noise is equally high compared to the signal, and therefore, curating good, targeted resources will be vital. Also, these platforms cannot be treated as a substitute for formal education, but as an extension or complementary source for research and education.
Interesting times ahead.
Today, I complete 15 years as a faculty member at IISER-Pune. I have attempted to put together a list of some lessons (based on my previous writings) that I have learnt so far. A disclaimer to note is that this list is by no means a comprehensive one, but a text of self-reflection from my viewpoint on Indian academia. Of course, I write this in my personal capacity. So here it is..
My academic journey so far has given me plenty of reasons to love physics, India and humanity. Hopefully, it has made me a better human being.
Apart from sipping the wonderful Japanese coffee and exploring the streets of Kyoto on foot, I have been looking into the archives of Kyoto University. I am mainly searching for records and books related to their physics department, and obviously, one of the names that pops out very often is Hideki Yukawa.
Yukawa was one of the Nobel laureates from this university. He obtained his Nobel Prize in Physics in 1949 for his prediction of the existence of mesons on the basis of theoretical work on nuclear forces. He is a big name in physics, and there is a physical potential named after him, which means one can understand the intellectual heft he carries as a physicist. Yukawa spent most of his scientific career at Kyoto, specifically at the Kyoto Imperial University (now, no more imperial :-) ), and is regarded as one of the inspirations for a battery of many excellent theoretical physicists to have emerged out of not only Kyoto but also Japan, and perhaps many parts of the world.
While looking through the archival records, I came across one of the textbooks owned by Yukawa, which has his signature on it. It made my day !
The textbook titled “A Text-Book of Physics,” edited by A. Wilmer Duff, is a classic. Yukawa had the 5th edition (1921), and this book went on to have 3 more editions. I hope to write more about this particular textbook because the author, Wilmer Duff, had a connection to Madras University (as a Professor) in India and was also on the faculty of my post-doc alma mater – Purdue University !
The scientific world is a small place with unanticipated, wonderful connections :-)
In the 1960s, C. V. Raman wrote a series of papers on floral colors and the physiology of vision. In there, he was very interested in the origin of colors from various different flowers. This was also motivated by his fascination with optics and natural colors in vegetation. Specifically, during that era, he had a large garden at his institution and he was deeply immersed in understanding the origin of the colors from these wonderful living creatures.
By using his knowledge of spectroscopy and the chemistry of pigments, he was able to explore some of the spectral features of the floral colors. The diagrams that you are seeing are illustrations from his paper published in 1963.
As you can observe, these illustrations are beautifully created. I don’t know whether Raman himself drew these pictures, but one should really appreciate the artist who has created them.
In a broader sense, it also indicates two important aspects. The first is that Raman was deeply motivated by natural phenomena. His intuition of optics helped him to understand the origins of a variety of natural optical processes. Spectroscopy was a crucial element in all the things that he did. The second aspect is that, in a deeper sense, aesthetics is interwoven with the pursuit of science and Raman’s work, especially towards the later part of his life, showcased it.
There is a fascinating video conversation with Richard Feynman where he describes the appreciation of the beauty of flowers by a scientist. Raman’s appreciation of beauty is close to what Feynman is describing in the video.
C. V. Raman was a curious person. He had a deep inclination to explore natural phenomena, using the knowledge and tools he had accumulated over several decades. In that sense, he was a scientist driven by curiosity before and after his Nobel prize.
Next time when you see a flower, remember that it is a creature of beauty and science merged together.
ps: blogpost in audio-visual format
Many of the Nobel winners in science deserve the prize they get, but there are many deserving who do not make the list for various reasons, including sociology, geography & financial support. Using the Nobel prize as a benchmark of progress may lead to errors in the judgment of a country.
A better way to judge is to ask: how are science and technology in a country making lives better for the people of the country & the world? A better life includes both intellectual & material aspects. We, in India & the global south, can make progress if scientific thinking becomes prevalent in the everyday discourse of society, from family conversations to political debates. And prizes, by design, are exclusive. It is easier to exclude a country that is not scientific as no one cares in such a situation.
Scientific progress in a society is generally bottom-up. We have a large population of young people who should be more scientific in their worldview. If we have a large, scientifically oriented population, science and technological achievements become proportional.
If science-based intellectual & material progress is achieved, prizes will follow. But a Nobel should not be our primary goal. Better lives & better minds should be.
Everything flows from there.
Our world is a place with complex ideas superimposed on people with ever-changing attention. Complex ideas are complex because they depend on multiple parameters. If something changes in the world, then that change can occur due to multiple reasons.
Unlike a carefully designed physics experiment, there are too many ‘hidden variables’ in human life and behavior, especially when they act collectively. In such a situation, it is pertinent to search for models to understand the complex world. Models, by definition, capture the essence of a problem and do not represent the complete system. They are like maps, zoomed out, but very useful if you know their limitations. I keep searching for mental models that will help me understand the complex world in which I live, interact, and comprehend.
Among many models, one of them that I use extensively is the follow-the-money model. This model explains some complex processes in a world where one does not have complete information about a problem.
Take, for example, the incentives to choose a research project. This is a task that as scientists, we need to do very often. In the process of choosing a project to work on, researchers have to factor in the possibility of that research being funded prior to the start of the project. This is critical for scientific research that is dependent on infrastructure, such as experimental sciences, including physics, chemistry, and biology. Inherently, as researchers, we tend to pick a topic that is at the interface of personal interest, competence, relevance, and financial viability.
The viability is an important element because sustained funding plays a critical role in our ability to address all the contours of a research project. Thus, as scientists, we need to follow the money and ask ourselves how our research can be adapted to the financial incentives that a society creates. A case in point is research areas such as AI, where many people are aware of its potential and, hence, support from society and an opportunity to utilize the available incentive.
It is important for the public to be aware of this aspect of research where the financial incentive to execute a project plays a role in the choice of the project itself. The downstream of this incentive is the opportunity to employ more people. This means large funding projects and programs attract more researchers. More people in the research area generate more data, and more data, hopefully, will result in more knowledge in the chosen research area. This shows how financial incentives play a critical role in propelling a research area. In that sense, the ‘follow the money’ model has a direct correlation with more researchers flocking towards a research area.
The downside of this way of functioning is that it skews people towards certain areas of research at the cost of another research area which may not find financial support from the society. This is a topic that is generally not discussed in science classes, especially at the undergraduate and research level but I think we should discuss with students about this asymmetry as their futures are dependent on financial support that they can garner.
Broadening the scope further, the ‘follow the money’ model is useful to understand why a certain global trend rises or falls. A contemporary global upheaval is the situation of war in Ukraine and Gaza. At first sight, it looks like these wars are based on ideologies, but a closer look reveals that these wars cannot be fought without financial support. Such underpinning of the money running the war reveals patterns in geopolitics that are otherwise not easy to grasp.
Ideologies have the power to act as vehicles of human change, but these vehicles cannot be propelled without the metaphorical fuel – that is, money. The ‘follow-the-money’ model can show some implicit motivation and showcase how ideologies can be used as trojan horses to gain financial superiority either through captured resources or through showcasing the ability to capture that resource. Following money is also a very powerful and useful model for understanding many cultural, sociological and political evolution, even in a complex country like India and other South Asian countries. I leave it as an intellectual assignment for people who want to explore it 😊. You will be surprised how effective it can be in explaining many complex issues, provided we know the limitations of the model.
As I mentioned earlier, a model is like a map. It is limited by resolution, the dimension and the viewpoint. But they are useful for navigating a complex world.
Here is a copy of the full book: LILAVATI’S DAUGHTERS coedited by Rohini Godbole & Ram Ramaswamy https://archive.org/details/A0560IASLeelavathisDaughterFullBook/mode/1up… Internet Archives zindabad!