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My Ph. D. thesis under the guidance of SDM had five papers.
The first two had his name as the first author.
Then on he was too busy with his other works while I was gaining more experience, and was going to him only once in a while to seek some help. When I wrote up the manuscript of our third paper and gave it to him for reading, it had his name as the first author. But, that evening I had one of those last minute inspirations all of us have, and in a ‘night-out’, I finished a long and beautiful calculation. I ran to his Qrs. next morning with my khata. He was having his morning cup of tea in the garden, and thought that I wanted to correct some error in our paper before it was too late. Then, he looked at the end results of my 30 page calculations cursorily, and okayed them in just two minutes (such was his intuition: ‘What looks beautiful is often true’, though not always, as we all know).
I begged him to include these results as the last section of our paper. He fell silent and agreed, but took out the manuscript, and quietly changed the order of the authors so that my name became first. I was glowing with pride to have SDM as the second author. (DB had this privilege often).
By the time I wrote up the fourth paper, he was getting more and more out of calculations in the problem ‘suggested’ by him. When I wrote up the manuscript and submitted it to him, he was silent for a few minutes and said that it should be split up into two papers (Part I and Part II) with his name as the first author in Part I and my name as the first author in Part II. I put my foot down. I reminded him of Solomon’s Judgment; he laughed uproariously. I told him it was going to be just one paper or none. He fell silent again and returned the manuscript deleting his name altogether, with a somewhat heavy heart (like Feynman, he published so few papers that losing one was never easy). He asked me not to forget acknowledging him, with a naughty smile.
The last paper arose from my own ideas. I did the calculation and got the result I intuited, provided I set the value of an integral to zero, without ‘proving’ it. I was hesitant and took my calculations to him and asked him if I was justified to do so. He looked at just that integral, and dismissed my qualms. He said we always set integrals that ‘oscillate at infinity’ to zero, Neumann or no Neumann! My mind was at peace. It was understood that it was going to be my ‘single-author’ paper (how does it matter?). I collected my khata and was leaving. Then he hailed me back. I was worried if something else was wrong. But, no! He simply ordered: ‘Don’t acknowledge me in your paper!’ I could see it was he who was worried (about the rest of my calculations which he didn’t see!).
O, Tempora, O, Mores!
SDM & His Beam Balance
My Ph. D. thesis under the guidance of SDM had five papers.
The first two had his name as the first author.
Then on he was too busy with his other works while I was gaining more experience, and was going to him only once in a while to seek some help. When I wrote up the manuscript of our third paper and gave it to him for reading, it had his name as the first author. But, that evening I had one of those last minute inspirations all of us have, and in a ‘night-out’, I finished a long and beautiful calculation. I ran to his Qrs. next morning with my khata. He was having his morning cup of tea in the garden, and thought that I wanted to correct some error in our paper before it was too late. Then, he looked at the end results of my 30 page calculations cursorily, and okayed them in just two minutes (such was his intuition: ‘What looks beautiful is often true’, though not always, as we all know).
I begged him to include these results as the last section of our paper. He fell silent and agreed, but took out the manuscript, and quietly changed the order of the authors so that my name became first. I was glowing with pride to have SDM as the second author. (DB had this privilege often).
By the time I wrote up the fourth paper, he was getting more and more out of calculations in the problem ‘suggested’ by him. When I wrote up the manuscript and submitted it to him, he was silent for a few minutes and said that it should be split up into two papers (Part I and Part II) with his name as the first author in Part I and my name as the first author in Part II. I put my foot down. I reminded him of Solomon’s Judgment; he laughed uproariously. I told him it was going to be just one paper or none. He fell silent again and returned the manuscript deleting his name altogether, with a somewhat heavy heart (like Feynman, he published so few papers that losing one was never easy). He asked me not to forget acknowledging him, with a naughty smile.
The last paper arose from my own ideas. I did the calculation and got the result I intuited, provided I set the value of an integral to zero, without ‘proving’ it. I was hesitant and took my calculations to him and asked him if I was justified to do so. He looked at just that integral, and dismissed my qualms. He said we always set integrals that ‘oscillate at infinity’ to zero, Neumann or no Neumann! My mind was at peace. It was understood that it was going to be my ‘single-author’ paper (how does it matter?). I collected my khata and was leaving. Then he hailed me back. I was worried if something else was wrong. But, no! He simply ordered: ‘Don’t acknowledge me in your paper!’ I could see it was he who was worried (about the rest of my calculations which he didn’t see!).
O, Tempora, O, Mores!
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