Roddam Narasimha is the DST Year-of-Science Professor at the Engineering Mechanics Unit, Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, Bangalore. Narasimha, a former professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at IISc, was one of Satish Dhawan’s earliest students. In this excerpt from a wide-ranging interview, he shares his memories of Dhawan. What was […]
Jyotsna Dhawan is a cell biologist working at the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad, and the Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine in Bangalore. Recently, Connect invited her to IISc to talk about her father, Satish Dhawan, one of India’s most well-known scientists and institution builders, particularly about his life away […]
And how its alumni shaped it in the years that followed IISc set up its Department of Aeronautical Engineering in 1942 – bang in the middle of World War II. It was the year that the Nazis were to begin acting on their horrific plan for a “Final Solution”, that the Japanese military strengthened its […]
Rama Govindarajan is a renowned scientist whose work lies in the area of fluid dynamics. The recipient of several awards, in 2007 she received the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for her “original contributions to the understanding of instabilities in shear and non-parallel flows, flow entrainment, turbulent transition and small-scale hydraulic jumps.” She remains the only […]
On 3 February 1959, the open-circuit wind tunnel at IISc was inaugurated by the Maharaja of Mysore, Jayachamarajendra Wadiyar. Embedded in the old Aerospace Engineering building, this wind tunnel has been responsible for testing several aircraft, including the Light Combat Aircraft (LCA), Tejas, and is functional to this day. In his speech, given in the […]
Malgudi, RK Narayan’s idyllic setting for his stories, may have been inspired by the Mysore of a bygone era, but its name is a felicitous blend of two of Bangalore’s oldest suburbs – Malleswaram and Basavangudi. Even in the 1970s, when I first arrived in the city, these areas retained an old-worldly charm. Few could […]
The old Aerospace Engineering building at IISc represents an architectural style that blends minimalism and functionality IISc is an institution with a history of more than 100 years. Not surprisingly, there are many stories here to be told. And not just about its people. There are also tales of its buildings waiting to be recounted. […]
In 1964, Hans Liepmann from Caltech arrived at IISc for a term. SM Deshpande, then doing his ME in the Department of Aeronautical Engineering, remembers the “glorious combination” that resulted. “Liepmann taught our batch,” says Deshpande, now at the Engineering Mechanics Unit at the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research. “We were very lucky. […]
Rajeswari Chatterjee was the first woman engineer to be appointed on the faculty of IISc. Read on to learn more about her research and legacy It was the year 1953, and IISc had just appointed Rajeswari Chatterjee – who had arrived in India from the US after her PhD from the University of Michigan – […]
Former IISc metallurgist V Ramachandran helped establish that a mid-air explosion brought down the plane V Ramachandran recognised the fragment from a stantion, one of the structural elements used to support the fuselage of the aeroplane. But it didn’t look normal: the aluminium tube had fractured and curled inwards by almost a full circle. […]
