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Whenever possible in the Faculty Meetings at IIT KGP, I used to steal a seat behind Prof MSS. Usually a pamphlet or two used to be distributed at the beginning of the Meeting. Within five minutes, MSS would turn his pamphlet over and keep doodling on it for the entire hour and more. I used to watch this mannerism of his with fascination. Generally his doodles consisted of outlines of birds in various attitudes, a worm or two, and occasionally a complicated system of pulleys and weights...to cook the goose of his next viva student...MSS was enamored of pulley systems and used to invent new and wicked ones for the edification of Professors of ME...Prof MDJ (of ME), when invited by MSS for a cup of tea in the canteen, used to make it a precondition that he wouldn't be tied down and lifted with pulleys and ropes.
It was a fashion of the day to read deep meanings into one's doodles...psychoanalysis. They would read deep meanings into my blogs as well if they had a chance. So, I used to ask MSS why he drew only birds and worms. And he would laugh and reply that they were the only figures he could draw. But he said that Nehru was a great doodler (in Parliament?) and one of his earliest doodles had mushroom clouds and rockets. That was great news for psychoanalysts, for, Nehru was quick to invite Homi Bhabha to start BARC...and we know that it contributed its mite to generate tiny invisible mushroom clouds deep underground (although some of his successors, after retirement, contested whether we had genuine mushrooms or only inverted carrots).
Occasionally I used to visit his tiny Office beside the Bathroom on the ground floor...he delivered most of his tutorials to me under the canteen mango tree. And of course his table was flooded with papers and chits of his bird doodles...once I was a scrutineer of his exam khatas and I found a couple of MSS-birds in the margins. Apart from them, and his bookshelf with rare books, the weirdest exhibit was a human skull...it was cute enough for him to use it as a paper-weight. I didn't have the courage to ask him where he got it or bought it and why...I knew he would say he found it by the wayside...KGP was not a well-known battle field unlike Blenheim:
MSS surely was not a kaapalik or taantrik who would chant and dance under moonless stars with his skull in his arms...he was fond of his swig or two though.
Altogether an interesting personality.
Wiki tells me that at least three American Presidents, Thomas Jefferson, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton were inveterate doodlers. I don't know what the first two doodled, but the last one is easy to crack...
Also John Keats of the Grecian Urn fame...death was stalking him throughout his short but sublime life.
Also, surprisingly, Stanislaw Ulam:
MSS told me that he used to go to SDM's Office often in the beginning, not to learn from him, but to test his Classical Mechanics and Physics. And he told me that although SDM couldn't answer all his wicked puzzles offhand, he never came out with a wrong answer. MSS attributed it to a sixth sense...he didn't know about the dozen other senses of SDM. And MSS had a few unkind words about Professor GB. But of course, as I said earlier...it means nothing...no one is a know-all, as MSS readily admitted. He was only looking to test whether the crowned emperors had any clothes at all. And MSS never tested his juniors...he either taught them or left them alone.
Once in the Second Year Lab, MSS asked a student where Newton's rings are formed and why. The student of course couldn't answer. Later I asked MSS why the rings are seen only at the site of the lens and glass plate but nowhere else. He told me point blank he didn't know. That was enough for me to try and get a simple enough answer to this question of localization of fringes which took decades to understand the way I wanted to...of course there were several complicated mathematical answers that hide the physics.
Long Live the Legacy of MSS at IIT KGP!!!
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Whenever possible in the Faculty Meetings at IIT KGP, I used to steal a seat behind Prof MSS. Usually a pamphlet or two used to be distributed at the beginning of the Meeting. Within five minutes, MSS would turn his pamphlet over and keep doodling on it for the entire hour and more. I used to watch this mannerism of his with fascination. Generally his doodles consisted of outlines of birds in various attitudes, a worm or two, and occasionally a complicated system of pulleys and weights...to cook the goose of his next viva student...MSS was enamored of pulley systems and used to invent new and wicked ones for the edification of Professors of ME...Prof MDJ (of ME), when invited by MSS for a cup of tea in the canteen, used to make it a precondition that he wouldn't be tied down and lifted with pulleys and ropes.
It was a fashion of the day to read deep meanings into one's doodles...psychoanalysis. They would read deep meanings into my blogs as well if they had a chance. So, I used to ask MSS why he drew only birds and worms. And he would laugh and reply that they were the only figures he could draw. But he said that Nehru was a great doodler (in Parliament?) and one of his earliest doodles had mushroom clouds and rockets. That was great news for psychoanalysts, for, Nehru was quick to invite Homi Bhabha to start BARC...and we know that it contributed its mite to generate tiny invisible mushroom clouds deep underground (although some of his successors, after retirement, contested whether we had genuine mushrooms or only inverted carrots).
Occasionally I used to visit his tiny Office beside the Bathroom on the ground floor...he delivered most of his tutorials to me under the canteen mango tree. And of course his table was flooded with papers and chits of his bird doodles...once I was a scrutineer of his exam khatas and I found a couple of MSS-birds in the margins. Apart from them, and his bookshelf with rare books, the weirdest exhibit was a human skull...it was cute enough for him to use it as a paper-weight. I didn't have the courage to ask him where he got it or bought it and why...I knew he would say he found it by the wayside...KGP was not a well-known battle field unlike Blenheim:
MSS surely was not a kaapalik or taantrik who would chant and dance under moonless stars with his skull in his arms...he was fond of his swig or two though.
Altogether an interesting personality.
Wiki tells me that at least three American Presidents, Thomas Jefferson, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton were inveterate doodlers. I don't know what the first two doodled, but the last one is easy to crack...
Also John Keats of the Grecian Urn fame...death was stalking him throughout his short but sublime life.
Also, surprisingly, Stanislaw Ulam:
"Mathematician Stanislaw Ulam developed the Ulam spiral for visualization of prime numbers while doodling during a boring presentation at a mathematics conference"
Once in the Second Year Lab, MSS asked a student where Newton's rings are formed and why. The student of course couldn't answer. Later I asked MSS why the rings are seen only at the site of the lens and glass plate but nowhere else. He told me point blank he didn't know. That was enough for me to try and get a simple enough answer to this question of localization of fringes which took decades to understand the way I wanted to...of course there were several complicated mathematical answers that hide the physics.
Long Live the Legacy of MSS at IIT KGP!!!
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