The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : India urged to invest a lot more in experimental physicists

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Sep 28, 2005

Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

India urged to invest a lot more in experimental physicists

Staff Reporter

Physics has a lot to offer to society, says Nobel laureate

TRADITIONAL WELCOME: Nobel laureate D. Osheroff being welcomed by Mathoor Krishnamurthy, Executive Director, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, before he delivered the H.K. Kejriwal Foundation Lecture in Bangalore on Tuesday. — Photo: K. Bhagya Prakash

BANGALORE: Nobel laureate D. Osheroff has urged the Indian Government to invest more in experimental physicists and to encourage them to come up with new systems.

Prof. Osheroff, Stanford University Professor of Physics and Applied Physics, said, "I understand the Government here is investing less in experimental physics. Physics is not dead and still has a lot to offer to society as a number of mysteries of nature still remained unravelled."

Talking to presspersons here on Tuesday, he said most Indian scientists who come to mind are all theoretical scientists. This he attributed to the fact that India is not keen on spending to build up infrastructure for experimental scientists.

Prof. Osheroff was in Bangalore to deliver the H.K. Kejriwal Foundation Lecture on "The Nature of Discovery in Physics," at Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan.

He said it is essential to have scientists work in the area of experimental physics because in its absence the science of physics does not amount to anything more than mathematics. Prof. Osheroff was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1996 along with J.G. Jackson and C.J. Wood for the discovery of super-fluidity in helium 3.

The Nobel laureate said he had observed that most of the Asian graduate students took engineering and information technology degrees because of the perceived notion that these degrees would bring high-paying jobs as well as due to parental compulsions. Prof. Osheroff stressed that the study of pure sciences such as physics could land individuals with high-paying jobs as would a degree in engineering. He shared several examples of PhDs in physics landing lucrative jobs in telecom industries and high-paying research laboratories.

He expressed concern over global warming, which, he said is responsible for natural disasters such as hurricanes. The burning of fossil fuels, he said, is responsible for the warming. Carbon dioxide levels had, over the last 400,000 years, risen by 370 particles per million (ppm), and it is expected to touch 500 ppm by 2050. There is need for technological intervention to reduce the level, he stressed.

Delivering the Foundation Lecture, Prof. Osheroff called for greater support to scientific research and freedom for scientists to go beyond their proposed areas of study to achieve results.

He advised students to use the best of instrumentation available to try and find the unexplained nature of the landscape. He urged students to be aware of subtle changes or unexplained behaviour of materials. "Sometimes these small changes lead to big discoveries," the scientist said.

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