Rations, blunders and too much ragi in the late 1940s When I joined the Institute (specifically, the Department of Electrical Technology) in 1947, the many messes attached to each of the four wings of the hostel had already been closed down and a common mess had started in the newly built auditorium. If there was […]
“What struck me was the amount of butter they served during breakfast: a full one-inch cube!” I was in the IISc hostel during 1956-59, when I was a student studying for D.IISc in the Department of Electrical Communication Engineering, and again during 1960-61 when I was a research student under the late Dr BS Ramakrishna, […]
“There always comes a time when you get so sick of the mess food that you want to start a revolution” When you go to a mess, you realise why it’s called a mess. There always comes a time when you get so sick of the mess food that you want to start a revolution. […]
When VC Amanan joined IISc in 1980, he was 26 years old. He had wanted to be a scientist, and applied to the Government Arts and Science College near KR Circle for a course in Chemistry, Biology and Zoology. But as luck would have it, he missed the interview for the seat as the letter […]
Eric Lord, a British-born mathematician, was a visiting scientist at IISc for over two decades. He first came to the Institute in 1972, and later returned to Bangalore, the city he loved, for good. A man of varied interests, Eric has written books about general relativity, mathematics, crystallography, and paranormal phenomena. He has also illustrated […]
On the day IISc first opened its doors to students, as the Institute’s Annual Report for 1911 tells us, one hostel block was ready for occupation. What the Annual Report doesn’t mention, however, is that the “students’ hostel” was only meant for men. In 1909, plans had been made for staff quarters, two blocks of […]
Violet Bajaj, a contemporary of Anna Mani and Rajeswari Chatterjee, talks about her years at the Institute and beyond Violet Bajaj is 101 years old. She sits in her room before dinner, with the Gerald Seymour thriller she is currently reading on the table before her. Reading is her favourite hobby, and a low cupboard […]
A telecommunications entrepreneur on the lure of industry I joined the Department of Electrical Communication as a research student in January 1965 after completing my MSc degree in Mathematics from Mysore University. During my PhD, I worked on a problem that drew heavily from a subject I loved, mathematics. Like many, I did not know what to expect when I joined the Institute. But […]
I was born on 24 January 1922, in Bangalore (when the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) was 13 years old) in a house called “Casetta” on Sankara Mutt Road in the southern part of Bangalore. Probably in 1934 or so, the children of our school, Mahila Seva Samaja, were taken in a bus to IISc […]
The mathematician and first woman to be dean at IISc on wearing many hats I was exhausted after facing an interview for the PhD programme at IISc’s Applied Mathematics Department [now called the Department of Mathematics], that lasted for more than three hours. Having lost hope, my father was ready to take me back home […]
