We explored his intellectual landscape of becoming a writer and a historian. We discuss his writing process and his experience of researching and teaching business history in a scientific & engaging way.
Diamond, Jared, and James A. Robinson. Natural Experiments of History. Reprint edition. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2011.
Jha, Prabhat, Yashwant Deshmukh, Chinmay Tumbe, Wilson Suraweera, Aditi Bhowmick, Sankalp Sharma, Paul Novosad, et al. “COVID Mortality in India: National Survey Data and Health Facility Deaths.” Science 375, no. 6581 (February 11, 2022): 667–71. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abm5154.
“Literature Festivals: India’s Vibrant History Scene.” Accessed October 15, 2024. https://historylitfest.com/.
Tumbe, Chinmay. Age Of Pandemics (1817-1920): How They Shaped India and the World, 2020.
———. India Moving: A History of Migration. Vintage Books, 2018.
X (formerly Twitter). “(1) Chinmay Tumbe (@ChinmayTumbe) / X,” June 9, 2024. https://x.com/chinmaytumbe.
An interesting way to look at Galileo's work. Has some interpretations from a modern capitalistic viewpoint.
From a history of science viewpoint, I am curious to know if such thought process was common in the medieval age or was particular to Galileo. https://t.co/JvXySKlk1q
Gamow, George. 1966. Thirty Years That Shook Physics: The Story of Quantum Theory.
An excerpt from the book mentioned above:
“Planck was a typical German professor of his time, serious and probably pedantic, but not without a warm human feeling, which is evidenced in his correspondence with Arnold Sommerfeld who, following the work of Niels Bohr, was applying the Quantum Theory to the structure of the atom. Referring to the quantum as Planck’s notion, Sommerfeld in a letter to him wrote:
You cultivate the virgin soil, Where picking flowers was my only toil.
and to this answered Planck:
You picked flowers—well, so have I. Let them be, then, combined; Let us exchange our flowers fair, And in the brightest wreath them bind.”
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!
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.)
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:
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
Every year on 28th February India celebrates National Science Day. Although, there is quite a bit of enthusiasm in this celebration, especially in academic environment including schools, universities and research institutes, the general public does not pay too much attention to it. Partly because symbolic days and symbolism are just that: symbols – superficial representation of something bigger. They do not encompass the complete picture, and they are too many in number.
Raman + Krishnan Effect : So, why does India celebrate National Science day on 28th February ? Well, on this day, way back in 1928, there was an experimental observation performed which turned out to be an important discovery in science. The main players in this discovery were two scientists from India: C.V. Raman and K.S. Krishnan. These men, after a long, sustained effort and with limited experimental resources, discovered a new type of secondary radiation, and the effect what is now known as Raman effect.
Stokes and anti-Stokes: The experiment that they were performing was to look at monochromatic (single colour) light scattering from molecules in a liquid. What Raman and Krishnan found was that scattered light had three components in terms of energy: the first and the dominant part of the scattered light had the same energy as the incident light, the second most dominant part of the scattered light had its energy lower than the incident light, and the third component, which was the weakest, had its energy greater than the incident light. These three components are called Rayleigh, Stokes and anti-Stokes light, respectively. The Stokes and the anti-Stokes components of the scattered light, together encompass the inelastic scattering in the process, and formally represent Raman scattering of light from molecules. What is remarkable on the part of Raman and Krishnan is that they experimentally observed these feeble, inelastic scattering components with ingenious experimental design. The story of this discovery is beautifully captured in the book The Raman and his effect by G. Venkatraman (who has also written a biography of C.V. Raman). In this book (page 46), we get a glimpse of the lab notes of K.S. Krishnan during this historical phase of experimental observation, which is reproduced below:
February 17, Friday
Prof, confirmed the polarisation of fluorescence in pentan vapour.
I am having some trouble with the left eye. Prof, has promised to
make all the observations himself for some time to come.
February 27, Monday
Religious ceremony in the house. Did not go to the Association.
February 28, Tuesday
Went to the Association only in the afternoon. Prof, was there and we
proceeded to examine the influence of the incident wavelength on the
phenomenon. Used the usual blue-violet filter coupled with uranium
glass, the range of wavelengths transmitted by the combination being
much narrower than that transmitted by the blue-violet filter alone.
On examining the track with a direct vision spectroscope, we found
to our great surprise that the modified scattering was separated from
the scattering corresponding to the incident light by a dark region
Note that it is this February 28, that we celebrate as National Science Day.
Mud + gold – I see an important lesson from this reading – that lab note books are an excellent window to the world of observations that a researcher experiences. Most of the time what is written in a lab notebook is routine stuff, but once in a while there is something important that pops out from it. The analogy is similar to digging for gold in the soil. Most of the time it is mud what you get, but once in a while you extract the precious metal. But without the effort of digging, one will never be able to extract the gold, and a lab notebook is the place where you record your efforts. So, what comes out as “success” is a small part of this greater effort. It is a tiny bit of a greater whole, and worth every bit.
Coming back to Raman and Krishnan, they published (see above) their experimental observation which caught the attention of scientific community around the world (‘western’ world to be more precise). And in 1930, Raman went on to win the Nobel prize in physics, and the rest is history. I need to emphasize that this discovery was made purely to address a quantum mechanical effect in optical regime. Specifically, the researchers were addressing an optical analog of the Compton effect, and they had no immediate applications in their mind. However, in the current age, Raman scattering spectroscopy, has bloomed into one of the most important scientific concepts, and a vital tool in science and technology, including applications in clinical bio-medicine and homeland security.
Prof. Wolfgang Kiefer showing his Raman scattering instrument which he has set-up in the basement of his house
The celebration: It has been 90 years since this important discovery, and to celebrate the discovery, there was a conference at IISc, Bangalore. Some of my students and I were part of it. In there, various researchers across the world including many from India, discussed about Raman scattering and its implication over the past 90 years. One of the highlights of the conference was a lecture by Prof. Wolfgang Kiefer (given on 28th February, National Science Day), who is a legend in the community of Raman scattering. Prof. Kiefer has been working on Raman scattering for more than 50 years. Now, he is retired, but amazingly, maintains a lab in the basement of his house, in which he has set-up Raman scattering experiments (see picture above), and pursues his curiosity with child-like enthusiasm. He gave an overview of his work done with his illustrious students from the past, and beautifully blended science, humor and humanity in a single talk. To listen to him was a pleasure and inspiration, and I will remember this for ever. On a personal note, I was actually celebrating the science day without realizing it !
BORN AGAIN: Today I opened the google webpage and to my surprise found the doodle (picture above) celebrating birthday of Max Born. He was not only a great physicist who contributed immensely to quantum mechanics and other branches of physics (including optics), but also a mentor to many great physicists including Fermi, Heisenberg, Pauli, Wigner, Teller, Emil Wolf and many more.
Every student who has studied physics, is aware of quantum mechanical wavefunction (ψ). Given a quantum system and its environment (electron in an atom, for example), wavefunction is a fundamental quantity that one can compute, and forms the basis to understand the system in greater detail. When quantum mechanics was evolving in early 1900s, the question of how to physically interpret the meaning of wavefunction was at the forefront. It was Max Born who gave the statistical interpretation for the wavefunction, which later fetched him a Nobel prize in 1954.
Born identified the importance of interpretation of the wavefunction, and its connect to the realistic, observable parameter. To quote Born from his Nobel lecture :
“The problem was this: an harmonic oscillation not only has a frequency,
but also an intensity. For each transition in the array there must be
a corresponding intensity. The question is how to find this through the
considerations of correspondence? “
This quest set forth an intense programme in physics and motivated people like Heisenberg, Schrodinger, Bohr, and Einstein to find an answer. Interestingly, Born’s work was heavily inspired by Einstein’s work. To quote Born from his Nobel lecture:
“But the decisive step was again taken by Einstein who, by a fresh
derivation of Planck’s radiation formula, made it transparently clear that the
classical concept of intensity of radiation must be replaced by the statistical
concept of transition probability.”
Further, he adds
“Again an idea of Einstein’s gave me the lead. He had tried to make the duality of particles light quanta or photons – and waves comprehensible by interpreting the square of the optical wave amplitudes as probability density for the occurrence of photons. This concept could at once be carried over to the ψ-function: |ψ|^2 ought to represent the probability density for electrons (or other particles).”
Reading Born’s Nobel lecture, two things struck me : first was that science is never done in isolation. Every single idea is inspired by another idea. Second, physical optics has a major influence on interpretation of quantum mechanics. Max Born was no stranger to optics. In fact, he was one of the pioneers of classical optics, and I am not surprised that he could make some vital connections between physical optics and quantum mechanics.
My personal copy…..standing tall and heavy :)
THE BOOK: This brings me to the most famous book written in optics(see picture above) by none other than Max Born and Emil Wolf (Emil Wolf was the last research assistant of Max Born, and a well know optical physicist) The book is titled “Principles of Optics”, but in optics community we call it “Born and Wolf”. The first edition of this book appeared in 1959, and has never gone out of print. Currently, it is in its 7th edition and is 951 pages thick !
As described in the preface (first edition of Born and Wolf), several people urged Born to translate his 1933 book: “Optik” from german to english. By 1950s, optics had evolved and had made inroads into atomic physics, molecular spectroscopy, solid-state physics and various other branches of science and technology. So, they had to write the book from scratch taking new ideas into consideration.
“Born and Wolf” explains optical phenomenon through the eyes of Maxwell’s theory, and has become the foundation on which various aspects of classical optics can be studied in a mathematically rigorous fashion. In fact, it also lays foundation to various quantum optical phenomenon including coherence and correlation functions, on which Emil Wolf’s contribution has been immense.
For me, chapter 13 on “Scattering from homogeneous media” is the highlight of this book. It starts with elements of scalar theory of scattering by expaining the first-order Born approximation followed by discussion on scattering from periodic potential. The best part is the discussion on multiple scattering, which in a sense lays the foundation to study various important optical phenomenon including diffraction tomography and optical cross-section theorem (or more famously known as Optical theorem). Also, the 13th chapter has a very interesting discussion on concept of far-field and its connection to scattering of electromagnetic waves.
Actually, the book is very well known for its treatment on diffraction theory and image formation. It gives a very strong footing to attack problems in imaging, aberration and inteferometry using Maxwell’s equation and related boundary condition. It also, highlights optics of metals, which has now transformed and evolved into a sub-field of optics and photonics – plasmonics.
Origins of the book: The writing of this book has a historical context. Emil Wolf was a research assistant (post-doc) of Max Born and joined him after his Ph.D. He recollects his experiences with Born and about writing this book in an interesting article. Below is an interesting quote:
“Through Gabor I learned in 1950 that Born was thinking of preparing a
new book on optics, somewhat along the lines of his earlier German book
Optik, published in 1933, but modernized to include accounts of the more
important developments that had taken place in the nearly 20 years that
had gone by since then. At that time Born was the Tait Professor of Natural
Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh, a post he had held since 1936,
and in 1950 he was 67 years old, close to his retirement. He wanted to find
some scientists who specialized in modern optics and who would be willing
to collaborate with him in this project. Born approached Gabor for advice,
and at first it was planned that the book would be written jointly by him,
Gabor, and H. H. Hopkins. The book was to include a few contributed
sections on some specialized topics, and Gabor invited me to write a section
on diffraction theory of aberrations, a topic I was particularly interested in
at that time. Later it turned out that Hopkins felt he could not devote
adequate time to the project, and in October of 1950, Gabor, with Born’s
agreement, wrote to Linfoot and me asking if either of us, or both, would
be willing to take Hopkins’ place. After some lengthy negotiations it was
agreed that Born, Gabor, and I would co-author the book.”
Wolf writes about Born and his working style:
“In spite of his advanced age Born was very active and, as throughout all
his adult life, a prolific writer. He had a definite work routine. After coming
to his office he would dictate to his secretary answers to the letters that
arrived in large numbers almost daily. Afterward he would go to the adjacent
room where all his collaborators were seated around a large U-shaped
table. He would start at one end of it, stop opposite each person in turn,
and ask the same question: “What have you done since yesterday?” After
listening to the answer he would discuss the particular research activity and
make suggestions. Not everyone, however, was happy with this procedure.
I remember a physicist in this group who became visibly nervous each day
as Born approached to ask his usual question, and one day he told me that
he found the strain too much and that he would leave as soon as he could
find another position. He indeed did 80 a few months later. At first I too
was not entirely comfortable with Born’s question, since obviously when one
is doing research and writing there are sometimes periods of low productivity.
One day when Born stood opposite me at the U-shaped table and asked,
“Wolf, what have you done since yesterday?” I said simply, “Nothing!” Born
seemed a bit startled, but he did not complain and just moved on to the next
person, asking the same kind of question again.”
Wolf also gives an account of why Gabor pulled-out, and how Wolf had to play an unexpected, but vital role in writing this book:
“…..Gabor soon found it difficult to devote the necessary time to the project, and it was mutually agreed that he would not be a co-author after all, but would just
contribute a section on electron optics. So in the end it became my task to
do most of the actual writing. Fortunately I was rather young then, and so
I had the energy needed for what turned out to be a very large project. I
was in fact 40 years younger than Born. This large age gap is undoubtedIy
responsible for a question I am sometimes asked, whether I am a son of the
Emil Wolf who co-authored Principles of Optics with Max Born!”
Wolf also praises Born’s open-mindness to various branch of physics:
“Optics in those days-remember we are talking about optics in pre-laser
days-was not a subject that most physicists would consider exciting; in fact,
relatively little advanced optics was taught at universities in those days. The fashion then was nuclear physics, particle physics, high energy physics, and
solid state physics. Born was quite different in this respect from most of his
colleagues. To him all physics was important, and rather than distinguish
between “fashionable” and “unfashionable” physics he would only distinguish
between good and bad physics research.”
Emil Wolf is now 95 years old, and is still a very active researcher. His recent paper was in 2016 on partially coherent sources and their scattering from a crystal. Wolf’s books are classics in optics, and continues to raise probing questions and important connections in sub-branches of optics.
In an essence, great science books are written with love and passion to communicate the excitement of science. Born and Wolf certainly does that, and continues to inspire us to learn optics from the masters themselves.
“The work for which the Nobel Prize has been awarded to me is of a kind which has no immediate effect on human life and activity, but rather on human thinking. But indirectly it had a considerable influence not only in physics but in other fields of human endeavour.
This transformation of thinking in which I have taken part is however a real child of science, not of philosophy: it was not the result of speculation, but forced upon us by the observed properties of Nature.”
Max Born and Emil Wolf, your work and your books have transformed our thinking, and the way we see light and matter. Thank You !
VISMAYA - History & Philosophy of Physics 