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Engagement with physics

INDIA IN THE WORLD OF PHYSICS — Then and Now: Edited by Asoke N. Mitra; General Editor - D. P. Chattopadhyaya; History of Science, Philosophy and Culture and Indian Civilization (Vol. XIII, Part I), Project of History of Indian Science, Philosophy and Culture (PHISPC), Centre for Studies in Civilization, Pearson Longman, 482 FIE Patparganj, Delhi-110092. Rs. 2200.

This historical account of noteworthy Indian contributions to modern physics forms part of the mammoth project, History of Indian Science, Philosophy and Culture (PHISPC), that was initiated far back in 1981 under the Indian Council of Philosophical Research (ICPR) by D. P. Chattopadhyaya, the then Chairman of the Council. In 1997 the Centre for Studies in Civilizations, a non-governmental organisation headed by Chattopadhyaya, was made the nodal agency of the project. It aims to bring out 50 volumes of books/anthologies, out of which 30 will be major volumes (in parts) and 20 will be in the nature of monographs. The volume under review is the latest to be published in the series and constitutes the first part of Vol. XIII that deals with physical sciences. The other parts will presumably relate to chemical, mathematical and biological sciences, though research in aspects of physics in these other areas has been well covered in this volume.

The compilation of the volume has taken nearly five years after Asoke N. Mitra, one of the foremost theoretical physicists of the country, was identified to edit the volume apparently on the suggestion of the late Raja Ramanna, the nuclear physicist. A reading of Mitra’s masterly Introduction to the volume, which, in fact, is a holistic perspective of the whole of physics itself as it were, particularly the emerging linkages across sub-disciplines of physics that he draws attention to, is indeed edifying. That he could condense all of physics — from Newton’s Laws to the emergent nanoscience that is sure to bring soon Feynman’s dream of bottom-up building of tailor-made materials to fruition — in mere 13 pages, with remarkable clarity and lucidity, only recalls to this reviewer his lucid lectures in classical and quantum electrodynamics at Delhi University nearly four decades ago. Equally insightful are his introductory notes in the beginning of each of the 11 parts (with 24 chapters) that the volume has been judiciously organised into. It is indeed a testimony to Ramanna’s acumen that he identified Mitra for the task, and Mitra too rightly has dedicated the volume to Ramanna.

That Mitra had to present an overview of nearly all of physics is also testimony to the fact that Indian contributions have spanned nearly the whole spectrum of physics — from laboratory experiments of early years in cosmic rays and crystallography to cutting-edge investigations in nanomaterials and radio astronomy, on the one hand, and from abstract fundamental aspects of early quantum theory to present day string formalism, on the other.

The volume, as the eminent Indian statistician C. R. Rao has rightly observed in his Foreword, is a valuable record of Indian contributions to the panorama of modern physics and its rapidly emerging character as an interdisciplinary science.

Of course, characterising the post-war Indian experience, Mitra rightly points out in his preface that, while the characteristic imprint of ‘Eastern thought’ was clearly visible in the researches of Bose(s)-Raman-Saha-G.N.Ramachandran, who did not have to ‘look Westward’ for ideas, “this background apparently did not provide a macroscopic enough environment for…[India] to compete with the West in self-generating an Independent Indian identity in scientific thought, except perhaps in individual minds…For, otherwise, it is difficult to understand (citing the example of China) why half a century is not long enough to transform a big society. The net result has been that the scientific progress in India as a whole has suffered from the ills of incoherence (progress seems to have been only proportional to N), while the full benefits of coherence could have resulted in the same progress advancing to N2 proportionality (somewhat akin to China).”

And yet, as he points out, this field of “scientific software” has had instances of remarkable successes and there are signs of such “islands of creativity” continuing to flourish and that too at the frontiers of physics, both theoretical and experimental, albeit not attaining the critical mass of people that one should ideally have. While it is not inconceivable, given that Indian scientists continue to make world-class contributions across all branches of physics, that breakthrough discoveries in the class of Bose(s), Raman, Saha and G. N. Ramachandran may emerge from India, there are, as J. V. Narlikar laments in his essay “Astronomy, Astrophysics, Relativity and Cosmology”, the dwindling number of bright students entering pure sciences is indeed a cause for worry.

Besides Narlikar’s extremely accessible essay, other contributions in the volume that stand out for their inclusiveness and insight are the following: Mitra’s own two expositions “Foundations of Quantum Theory” (though his according of importance to the controversial work of C. S. Unnikrishnan seems unwarranted at this point of time especially given Bernard d’Espegnat’s criticism of his work) and “From Nuclear to Sub-Hadron Physics”, an area of his expertise; N. Mukunda’s succinct essay “Optical equivalence Theorem”, essentially describing the work of George Sudarshan and R. J. Glauber in quantum optics. (Intriguingly, as Mitra points out, the 2005 Nobel Prize went only to Glauber “presumably for highly technical reasons best known to the Royal Swedish Academy.”); G. Rajasekaran’s concise and pointed, and an yet eminently readable overview “From Atoms to Quarks and Beyond” (wherein he highlights some of the missed opportunities by Indian physicists); N. Panchapakesan’s simple but up-to-date description of Indian contribution in gravitation and cosmology; T. V. Ramakrishnan’s extended coverage of the Indian work in the vast field of condensed matter physics (though some repetitions could have been avoided); and, M. Vijayan’s aptly titled “Biophysics, Crystallography and GNR” overview of the “GNR legacy” that has truly been responsible for the place that India today has on the world biophysics map. (One may add here that the chapter by Naba K. Mondal has a lot of typographical errors and could have been edited better.)

The inclusion of detailed individual chapters on scientific infrastructure established by the Indian nuclear and space agencies seems somewhat out of place in the volume as these largely cover aspects of technology. Notwithstanding the widely heard, but quite misplaced, phrase “rocket science”—which is no more than Newton’s equations of motion and where even Tsiolkovsky’s rocket equation was at the turn of the 20th century—whatever significant basic science is being done by these agencies could have been subsumed in the other chapters. One significant area that has been omitted in the volume, where Indian scientists have made very significant contributions, is meteorological and atmospheric science, an area whose beginnings can be said to have occurred in India with Gilbert Walker and later with important contributions from scientists such as K. R. Ramanathan and L. A. Ramdas.

There are other notable omissions of individual contributions, the foremost among them being the Harish-Chandra equation for point particles of arbitrary spin (though there is passing mention of the Bhabha high-spin equation in Rajasekaran’s chapter), which is finding renewed interest in the so-called Skyrmion models and high-spin fields of Kaluza-Klein and quantum gravity theories. Similarly, significant contributions of C. L. Mehta and Girish Agarwal that carried Sudarshan’s work in quantum optics further unfortunately find no mention. At a more general level is the omission of D. S. Kothari’s path-breaking work on the “Harmful Effects of Atomic Explosions”, a work that predates Samuel Glasstone’s classic volume by a year. Hopefully these would be rectified in subsequent editions.

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