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Once upon a time at IIT KGP in the 1960s there was a famous professor in the ME Department by name Professor Mokadam. Legend and rumor had it that he was fresh from Stanford or Caltech or even MIT...well nobody I knew asked him point blank...so we leave it at that. For, rumors in the Halls of Residence spread like wild fire without a spark to ignite them. Aniket tells us that he was told emphatically that one of our Physics Faculty did his Ph D under Feynman himself...
But there was little doubt that Prof Mokadam was a world-class expert in Heat Engines and sat in the first floor office of the Heat Engines Lab. And the brusque way he dealt with his students and Research Scholars confirmed the reputation of his no-nonsense mastery of his subject. It was said that at the end of a year of teaching Thermodynamics to his M Tech students, when they went to thank him for all the good things he taught them, he apparently got up and said:
"This year has been the greatest failure of my life...I couldn't drill a single concept of the subject through your thick skulls"
He had an M Tech student, Nagarajan, in whom he put the fear of God...absolutely. And one day, my friend VR (Radhakrishnan) of CHE Department and a close friend of Nagarajan, wanted to pinch a few ml of mercury from the Heat Engines Lab for his thesis work and asked Nagarajan to help him out. And Nagarajan told him to come after 12.30 lunch time by when Mokadam would have safely left home for his lunch. And VR gave a few more minutes leeway and was walking up the stairs of the Heat Engines Lab. And saw Mokadam hurrying down the steps, late for his lunch...he stopped; and VR told me the crisp dialogue that ensued:
"Who the hell are you?"
"A friend of Nagarajan, sir!"
"Get out! No friend of that Nagarajan is welcome in my Lab!"
There was also this story of how his Interview went at IIT KGP. Apparently the Local Expert started asking Mokadam (leading perhaps to bigger things):
"State Second Law of Thermodynamics"
This got Mokadam's goat since that is a question we ask routinely in the second year viva. And so he snorted like a bull and said:
"There are six different ways of stating the Second Law of TD. Tell me which one you want and which one you know...Claussius's, Kelvin's, Caratheodary's etc...and finally Mokadam's"
That is a nice gambit I learned to use often (I leak it out...take it or leave it). When someone asks you in the class room or outside a question you can answer, sort of, you straighten yourself a bit and start:
"There are at least 3 ways of looking at it...first..."
And by the time you drag on the (first) answer you know, the chaps would have been so impressed that they won't ask you for the second and third...fearing it would take even more of their valuable time.
I employed it with some finesse in my third interview at KGP. Professor Shankar Lal (Diro) was the Chairman and HNB was the smiling HoD. The SINP expert asked me:
"Tell us about Cherenkov Emission (my thesis topic)"
"There are six different ways of explaining it....from the simplest to the fanciest...let me take the simplest..."
"Why? Why?? Why??? Tell us the fanciest!"
And that led me to talk what I badly wanted to talk of...Toraldo di Francia and the evanescent waves that is really nice and I later used in my PRS paper with KK.
Prof HNB was in the Chair while the public seminar (synopsis submission) of a smart RS was on. And I was a curious onlooker from the backbench.
There was a sort of spat between HNB and the thesis joint-guide of this RS as his work progressed...one of the risks of bigamy...HNB then withdrew his name. As the talk progressed, HNB sat silent and this encouraged the young chap to brag about his work. And HNB couldn't stand it any longer and pointed out an inconsistency between the results of two readings presented by him. Neither the RS nor his witnessing guide could answer the query properly as was evident from the audience reaction.
Finally the young one shrugged his shoulders and said abruptly:
"O, well! This has been accepted for publication in the forthcoming issue of Physical Review"
"You have done a great disservice to the scientific community...retract your paper immediately!"
Silence!!!
...Posted by Ishani
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Once upon a time at IIT KGP in the 1960s there was a famous professor in the ME Department by name Professor Mokadam. Legend and rumor had it that he was fresh from Stanford or Caltech or even MIT...well nobody I knew asked him point blank...so we leave it at that. For, rumors in the Halls of Residence spread like wild fire without a spark to ignite them. Aniket tells us that he was told emphatically that one of our Physics Faculty did his Ph D under Feynman himself...
But there was little doubt that Prof Mokadam was a world-class expert in Heat Engines and sat in the first floor office of the Heat Engines Lab. And the brusque way he dealt with his students and Research Scholars confirmed the reputation of his no-nonsense mastery of his subject. It was said that at the end of a year of teaching Thermodynamics to his M Tech students, when they went to thank him for all the good things he taught them, he apparently got up and said:
"This year has been the greatest failure of my life...I couldn't drill a single concept of the subject through your thick skulls"
He had an M Tech student, Nagarajan, in whom he put the fear of God...absolutely. And one day, my friend VR (Radhakrishnan) of CHE Department and a close friend of Nagarajan, wanted to pinch a few ml of mercury from the Heat Engines Lab for his thesis work and asked Nagarajan to help him out. And Nagarajan told him to come after 12.30 lunch time by when Mokadam would have safely left home for his lunch. And VR gave a few more minutes leeway and was walking up the stairs of the Heat Engines Lab. And saw Mokadam hurrying down the steps, late for his lunch...he stopped; and VR told me the crisp dialogue that ensued:
"Who the hell are you?"
"A friend of Nagarajan, sir!"
"Get out! No friend of that Nagarajan is welcome in my Lab!"
There was also this story of how his Interview went at IIT KGP. Apparently the Local Expert started asking Mokadam (leading perhaps to bigger things):
"State Second Law of Thermodynamics"
This got Mokadam's goat since that is a question we ask routinely in the second year viva. And so he snorted like a bull and said:
"There are six different ways of stating the Second Law of TD. Tell me which one you want and which one you know...Claussius's, Kelvin's, Caratheodary's etc...and finally Mokadam's"
That is a nice gambit I learned to use often (I leak it out...take it or leave it). When someone asks you in the class room or outside a question you can answer, sort of, you straighten yourself a bit and start:
"There are at least 3 ways of looking at it...first..."
And by the time you drag on the (first) answer you know, the chaps would have been so impressed that they won't ask you for the second and third...fearing it would take even more of their valuable time.
I employed it with some finesse in my third interview at KGP. Professor Shankar Lal (Diro) was the Chairman and HNB was the smiling HoD. The SINP expert asked me:
"Tell us about Cherenkov Emission (my thesis topic)"
"There are six different ways of explaining it....from the simplest to the fanciest...let me take the simplest..."
"Why? Why?? Why??? Tell us the fanciest!"
And that led me to talk what I badly wanted to talk of...Toraldo di Francia and the evanescent waves that is really nice and I later used in my PRS paper with KK.
Prof HNB was in the Chair while the public seminar (synopsis submission) of a smart RS was on. And I was a curious onlooker from the backbench.
There was a sort of spat between HNB and the thesis joint-guide of this RS as his work progressed...one of the risks of bigamy...HNB then withdrew his name. As the talk progressed, HNB sat silent and this encouraged the young chap to brag about his work. And HNB couldn't stand it any longer and pointed out an inconsistency between the results of two readings presented by him. Neither the RS nor his witnessing guide could answer the query properly as was evident from the audience reaction.
Finally the young one shrugged his shoulders and said abruptly:
"O, well! This has been accepted for publication in the forthcoming issue of Physical Review"
"You have done a great disservice to the scientific community...retract your paper immediately!"
Silence!!!
...Posted by Ishani
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