Why it matters and what are the challenges confronting science historians A quick internet search on the discovery of helium will be dominated by results that claim that helium was discovered by the French astronomer Pierre Janssen. “While observing a solar eclipse in Guntur, India, on 18 August 1868, Janssen noted that the […]
Category: History
‘He Wanted to Leave Something Behind that Lasted Forever’
JC Ghosh, an eminent chemist, was IISc’s Director during World War II and the founding Director of IIT Kharagpur. His grandson, Dipankar Ghosh, spoke to CONNECT about his grandfather’s personal and professional life. In the late 1980s, E Arunan was looking for a place to stay in the midwestern town of Manhattan in the […]
Chemistry Matters
Why the oldest department in IISc continues to be relevant As one goes down the canopy-covered Tala Marg in IISc, there stands a building tucked unobtrusively on the right side. The exposed stone bricks, sharp features, and small windows harken back to a time when robustness and utility were qualities that were paramount. Even […]
Electronic City Was Not Built in a Day
The story of Rama Krishna Baliga, a government bureaucrat who laid the foundation for Electronic City, which eventually led to Bangalore becoming the “Silicon Valley of India” Ragavendra R Baliga has fond memories of his father, Rama Krishna Baliga. “There’s an article my father wrote for my medical school journal after he retired. [In that], […]
Keepers of History
The need for archives in academic institutions In a pivotal scene in the sensational Christopher Nolan film, Oppenheimer, the protagonist, J Robert Oppenheimer, meets Danish physicist Niels Bohr while struggling with his research at Cambridge University in the early 1920s. Bohr urges Oppenheimer to move to Germany and study under the famed physicist and […]
Mining for White Gold
India is betting big on lithium-ion batteries, but at what cost? In 1817, Johan August Arfwedson, a Swedish lawyer and mineralogist, was studying the mineral petalite in the laboratory of the renowned chemist Jacob Berzelius. His investigations revealed that the mineral mainly contained aluminium, silicon and oxygen. But around 4% of the composition […]
How a Physicist Became a Mathematician
2023 marks the birth centenary of the influential mathematician Harish-Chandra who spent two important years at IISc “The book of nature is written in the language of mathematics,” declared the Italian astronomer and physicist Galileo Galilei in an essay titled The Assayer published in 1623. Mathematics is an indispensable tool for physicists who strive […]
Giving Wings to the LCA
IISc has made significant contributions to the development of Tejas, India’s Light Combat Aircraft In July 1940, during the early stages of World War II, the skies over Europe rumbled as the Luftwaffe, Nazi Germany’s air force, launched a massive attack on Britain’s Royal Army and Royal Navy. For months, the two sides battled […]
‘Why Can’t We Make Small Talk About Science?’
Kollegala Sharma has worked as a science communicator for over 40 years. After quitting his PhD in radiation biology, he worked as an Assistant Editor for Science Reporter – CSIR-NIScPR’s magazine – then as a Kannada science columnist in the newspaper Kannada Prabha, and as a chief scientist at CFTRI, Mysuru. He has written articles […]
Is Digitising Archival Material Really a No-Brainer?
Digitisation helps preserve valuable material as well as provide access to it. But getting there and beyond can be a thorny process As staff in an archive, if there’s one thing we learned from the COVID-19 pandemic, it is how important digitised material can be to researchers. With lockdowns and several travel restrictions in […]