Name-Game

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My blogs are becoming just like my life....'wayward'.

Last night I began talking about my take on the Inscrutability of Americans and ended up talking about the Sommerfeld-Watson Transformation.

Let me continue and see where this goes:

'Sommerfeld' was a great name to drop during my times. It sounds good and has an aura and tang that reminds one of flowering fields of summer.

Not that I resorted to name-dropping with my students: First there was never any need, and second it wouldn't work. Those few students who cared, didn't get frightened by big names: they wanted 'stuff'. The rest couldn't CARE period.

But there were occasions when I resorted to this business and it always worked.

Professor T. Pradhan, who was the Founder-Director of IOP(?) was my Ph D Viva Examiner (1975) by virtue of the proximity of Bhubaneswar to Kharagpur. He told me after my Viva that he was too busy to read my thesis and could only glance through the Introduction and the Reprints on his train journey. But that was enough for an experienced Viva Examiner, I guess. In the hundreds of Vivas I (and my son) experienced at KGP on either side of the shows, it was always the 'presentation' which counted.

[Punch Cartoon: The picture showed the results of a Vegetable Show. The First Prize went to a dame, suitably underdressed, wheeling a barrow with not a Really HUGE cabbage; followed by an old man, suitably overdressed, carrying an ENORMOUS pumpkin, winning the Second Prize. Man says: "She scored in Presentation"]

My Viva went ok.

Two years later, I entered the Director's Office to face an Interview for my Promotion. And was pleasantly surprised that TP was there again as an Expert this time, for the same reason.

Deja Vu:

Same questions; same answers. Nothing learned; nothing forgot. Both sides.

TP asked me what did I teach. "Electrodynamics" "From which book?" "Sommerfeld" (gul! I read that book, and his 'Optics', cover to cover, but was teaching from Panofsky-Phillips and Jackson) "Which Indian Physicist's name occurs in his books?" "J C Bose" "In which context?" "Frustrated Total Internal Reflection" "Body or Footnote?" "Footnote" "Which other book describes this phenomenon most elegantly?" "Feynman Lectures" "Very Good!"

An exchange of glances between the HoD (HNB) and the Director Shankar Lal; and I was through.

Double dose name-dropping.

Then there was this KK who reluctantly joined me as an M Sc Project Student, as he himself admits. Nowadays he is a Senior Professor at IIT KGP holding an important Administrative Position and rings me up at midnight a couple of days back for urgent consultations which take a day and half to settle a Physics Issue hanging fire. I have to comply: my pension is with KGP.

Anyway, he told me much later that he wanted to apply my Principle of Least Action and do as little work as he could manage. But, unfortunately for him, my son was just a babe at that time not letting me do the nitty-gritty calculations; and so I had to summon KK to my home every night during the Summer Vacation and make him do the calculations under my direct 'supervision'. Midway, both of us found the thing was getting very interesting, and neither of us relaxed. His Project Thesis led to an experimentally verifiable new prediction. Since this is so rare in Theoretical Physics, I took 2 years finalizing it, with mails and further calculations back and forth between KGP and Kanpur, where he joined as an RS.

At that time Proceedings of the Royal Society, London, was the best Journal in this field. So, I took my time to plan the 'Introduction' and decided to drop Sommerfeld from Heaven (Himmel). The first sentence read:

"Sommerfeld (1954) remarked: 'Cherenkov Effect makes electrons visible'."

That one leading sentence won half the battle; and it was published forthwith (1987) and the experimental confirmation followed from the Proton-Synchrotron Labs, JINP, Dubna, USSR.

Last week, my Medico-Brother-in-Law (ex-President IMA, Tamilnadu Chapter..to drop more names!) forwarded a set of beautiful photos of Transparent Butterflies.

I at once gave some gyan taken from Sommerfeld's 'Optics'. He was so charmed that he forwarded my Sommerfeld comment to their entire IMA Chapter.
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"Truly Beautiful and Gorgeous! I think there is a bit of lovely Physics here too. Butterfly wings made of ordinary 'chemical pigments (dyes)', which work by absorption and reflection of specific colors of light like those of any sari, won't be this transparent. These must be 'Interference Colors'. Just like the colors of soap film bubbles we all played with in our childhood.

Sommerfeld mentions this in his famous Optics Book written a century ago"

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I now narrate an absolutely true story (really!):

1992: Midway through the 10-year Rule as Director of IIT KGP, of Prof KLC, who also happened to be a Physicist-Material Scientist of world renown.

A month after he took over, he transformed the Ground Floor of our Department and converted it into a gold-plated hi-tech Microscience Lab and recruited a dozen or so Research Scholars and co-workers in his Lab. The place was truly humming with unwonted activity. He got installed the then latest Nobel-winning Scanning Tunneling Microscope, whose output photographs I displayed in my B Tech Class and these converted the Pussy Cat from Chemical Engg to Pure Physics (Refer to the blogpost: 'Russi Modi's Tom Cat').

One fine noon, there was a phone call for me from our HoD, Prof KVR, asking if he could meet me urgently in my celebrated Room C-239. I replied I could as well go over to his office, but he was particular that since the work was not 'official' but 'personal' it was his turn to come to me, as per Protocol. I said welcome.

In a few minutes, he arrived, closed the door, drew a Chair close me so that his back would face DB who was blowing smoke rings and searching for a poker to hit with his sledge-hammer called S-W Transformation; and said sotto voce tremulously that his honor, if not job, was in jeopardy. I asked him what such a serious matter could be. He replied that he just then got a call from the HoD Material Science that he is forwarding an RS of the Diro KLC with a crystal whose optic axis needs to be determined experimentally. HoD Mat Science washed his hands of the matter since KVR, on his own proclamation, was the Local Authority in Dielectrics, so the baby was squarely in his lap. KVR couldn't back out (his honor was at stake). Nor could he fail (his job was at stake, as per his hallucinations). And he confessed that he never had to locate optic axes of any crystals in his life. He got his crystal samples from MIT a couple of decades ago; but....that was it!

I told him not to worry, but simply send the RS to me with the crystal. At that time the subject was at my finger tips. And my UG training at AU made me fearless in Labs.

In a few minutes, Ms M (KLC's RS) arrived smiles all over. The smiles, I thought, were of mutual recognition: she and her would-be (who sat in my M Sc Class a couple of years back and whose Hall Day Group Photo was still in my album) were attending my Lectures on History of Science & Technology sitting side-by-side.

Little did I KNOW!

I asked her to hand me the crystal. She said she would fetch it whenever I was free. I asked her to bring it that Wednesday afternoon when the Second Year Lab would be free.

Come Wednesday afternoon, Ms M was accompanied by a total stranger, Ms P, who fished out the 25-paise-shaped crystal from her Money Purse and handed it over to me. I kept quiet and got down to business.

I pondered over the issue during the interval: since they were asking for 'the' optic axis, it should be a uniaxial crystal. And if I was lucky, the optic axis could be on its surface; most cuts are like that, perhaps. This could be decided in a few minutes. If so, the matter is simple. I could locate its optic axis by sandwiching it between two polaroid sheets and rotating them suitably.

I WAS lucky: the axis was on its surface.

Those days, (I don't know now), the Polaroid sheets didn't come with THEIR Pass Axes drawn on them. So, a supplementary experiment was required to determine them. The only recourse is to Brewster's Law. I knew where exactly a glass slab was (I was the Second Year Lab-in-Charge some years ago).

Shining Sodium light on the Glass Slab via the Polaroid, and rotating it viewing the reflected beam till it disppears, the thing was done in 10 minutes.

I asked them to give me a ball pen and lightly drew the blessed optic axis on its crystal.

And pocketed the crystal.

And asked them to tell me the whole story. It turned out that neither the Crystal nor the Problem belonged to Ms M of the Diro's Lab; but to Ms P, who was an M Tech student in the ECE Dept and was a close friend of Ms M in the SN Hall.

Bomb-Shell_Name-Dropping!

Felt sorry for KVR.

I wanted to teach them a lesson, but not a stern one. I told them to go to Prof KVR and tell him the truth. Then only he would revert the crystal to them.

They agreed.

Meanwhile I met Prof KVR and handed him the cute crystal with its optic axis drawn on it; but asked him not to report to the Diro till I 'submitted' to KVR a 'Detailed Write-up of the Experimental Procedure'.

Which, of course, I never did!
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