Himalayan Misconceptions

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"...Born in Goraganamudi village near Bhimavaram in West Godavari district on December 5, 1896, Swami Jnanananda was trained by a private tutor at home for about five years before joining the Taylor High School at Bhimavaram. He was interested only in mathematics, physics and chemistry in his high school. He could not pass the S.S.L.C. examination in 1917 for his poor performance in non-science subjects. He discontinued his studies and concentrated more on religious practices..."

http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/mp/2003/01/13/stories/2003011301340200.htm


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When I joined as a Research Scholar in the NQR Laboratory at AU, Vizagh at the age of 19, I was romantic about research . There were two misconceptions I had about Ph D which I thought was the summum bonum of all research:

1. To get a Ph D, one must do something absolutely new

2. And should understand thoroughly what one is doing

I didn't have the insight that Dipak had, viz:

"If I knew what I am doing, I would not call it research "

But of course he was leaning towards his 30 when he sent this 'auto-epitaph' from Queen Mary and West Field College, London; and he was a full-fledged Doctor.

As Shakespeare said: "Ripeness is all"

So, I thought I must do something like Chadwick. Our teacher of modern physics, Prof B R Rao, used to become starry-eyed when he taught us the discovery of neutron.

But as I learned quickly enough, neither of the above criteria was being fulfilled in our Lab at AU. And, the only man there (with a D Phil from Oxford) who could understand and explain the first para of the only book on the subject available then by T P Das and E L Hahn (Solid State Physics [Supplement 1] edited by Seitz and Turnbull) that talked about Wigner-Eckart Theorem and Matrix Elements of the Quadrupole Tensor Operator between angular momentum eigenstates which by the way I taught at IIT KGP thirty years later), was my Guide, who however suddenly turned a devotee of Dayalbagh Radhasoami Satsangh and lost all interest in his scholars except for signing their monthly fellowship bills and 'no-objection' certificates for folks desirous of quitting the lab for better jobs.

So, I was left to my own devices and thought I would make a 'spin-echo' apparatus for NQR along the lines of the one for NMR...the two are as different as hilsa and dosa, which however rhyme together. See:

http://gpsastry.blogspot.in/2009_06_01_archive.html

Raadha goes to Kolkata
With her best friend Dola;
One loves Dosa,
The other loves Hilsa;
Both are fond of Masaala!

That required a very high voltage (about 2 kV) pulse generator which was not available in the market then.So I made inquiries and discovered that BARC was making one and the circuit is available in the Department of Nuclear Physics, a kilometer away from our Physics Building. So, I thought I would make a visit and borrow it. And I was told that a 'request letter' from my HoD to their HoD is a must. So, I went back and after a month of 'processing' I got the required letter and made another visit to the Nuclear Physics Building. As I was entering the Hall, I found a tall handsome old man in flowing white robes standing there leaning on a walking stick, and I asked him to direct me to the HoD's Office. He then smiled gently and said: "Follow me" and entered the Office titled: Swami Jnanananda, Head of the Department; and took the HoD's chair and asked me to sit down in the chair opposite. And as I sat stunned, he said he was the HoD and asked me who I was. I told him I was an RS in the Physics Department.

That pleased him very much and he placed a brand new book in my hands and asked me to read aloud its Foreword. I saw the title was "High Vacuum" by Swami Jnanananda and the eloquent Foreword was written by none other than Chadwick, my hero.

I got the circuit alright...

But in case you are interested in a clone of Gautama, the Buddha, see the link in the epigraph above.

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Lost & Found!

Aniket sends me this Woody Allen Quote:

"Interestingly, according to modern astronomers, space is finite. This is a very comforting thought...particularly for people who can never remember where they have left things"

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