Jawaharlal Vaid, 88, was at the Institute from 1951 to 1957 at the Department of General and Applied Chemistry (eventually renamed Inorganic and Physical Chemistry), doing his Master’s and PhD. He went on to have a distinguished career in industry, working for the Indian Telephone Industry, and setting up India’s first capacitor plant for Jay […]
2019 is the birth centenary of Vikram Sarabhai, the founder of India’s space programme, who was born in Ahmedabad on 12 August 1919. Sarabhai, pursuing his studies at Cambridge when WWII broke out, returned to India to work with CV Raman at IISc, where he also met Homi J Bhabha. In these excerpts from her […]
11 December 2019 marks the 137th birth anniversary of Max Born, who came to IISc on CV Raman’s invitation The Mysterious Number 137 was the title of a lecture that Max Born delivered to the South Indian Science Association in Bangalore on 7 November 1935. Called the fine structure constant α, 137 is a dimensionless […]
Looking back at over 100 years of its publication I once asked the students at one of my lectures whether they had heard of the Journal of the Indian Institute of Science. The response I received was depressing, particularly because I happened to be the Journal’s Editor at the time. Except for a few hands […]
The first national effort to understand the meteorological phenomenon For about four months from May to September 1990, the Indian summer monsoon was the subject of unprecedented nationwide attention. While the monsoon winds raced from Kerala to the northwest of India in 35 days, less than its usual 45, researchers on land, air and sea […]
Syed Ameenulla, who joined IISc as a lab assistant and went on to be a scientific officer, recalls his involvement in the Institute’s monsoon experiments In the monsoon of 1979, Chandipur beach in Balasore, Odisha was host to a small group of researchers from Bangalore. The team, from IISc and the National Aeronautical Laboratory (NAL), […]
On May 27, 1909, the Government of India published a Vesting Order and a Scheme for the Management of the Institute in the Gazette of India, officially creating the Indian Institute of Science. The years preceding and following this saw a flurry of activity: designs for new laboratories, construction work to build new departments, plans […]
The photos here are part of a series marking IISc’s 110th anniversary. Early construction at IISc was done by TCW Skipp, with whom the institute signed a contract in 1908. Before the end of that year, most of the drainage and sewer system had been laid by Pallonji Edulji & Sons. This photo shows the […]
IISc and IIT Madras have agreed to host the institutional chapters of Re:Collect, a first-of-its-kind public digital repository to document memories of Indian science We are fast losing the memories of a generation that built the infrastructure to transform Indian science and engineering in the 20th century. To capture and preserve these experiences, my team […]
The photos here are part of a series marking IISc’s 110th anniversary. The Viceroy of India, Lord Hardinge, visited the Institute around 1913. IISc decorated its campus to welcome him. On 1 February 1911, the Maharaja of Mysore, Krishnaraja Wadiyar, laid the Foundation Stone of the Main Building. The occasion saw speeches made by Morris […]
