The State of Mysore played a crucial role in helping establish IISc and influenced its research in the years that followed “Mysore is the best administered state in the world,” John Sankey, the Lord Chancellor of Great Britain and a human rights activist, is said to have declared during the first Round Table Conference in […]
Category: History
‘The Underdog as Scientist’
The following extract is a speech made by Krishnaraja Wadiyar, the Maharaja of Mysore from 1894 until 1940, at a ceremony to lay the foundation stone of IISc’s Main Building in 1911 Very deep is the responsibility which has fallen on me to-day of laying the Corner Stone of these magnificent buildings, the future home […]
Who Was Kempananjammani Vani Vilasa Sannidhana?
While historical accounts have plenty to say about her husband, Chamarajendra, and her son, Krishnaraja, little is known about her life in comparison IISc was set up in Bangalore was because of the generous grant of land and money by the Maharani of Mysore, Kempananjammani Vani Vilasa Sannidhana, who headed the princely state of Mysore […]
KP Sinha, ‘a vortex of ideas’
KP Sinha, a versatile physicist whose association with IISc stretches back almost fifty years, will turn 90 in July 2019 KP Sinha is an unusual man. Getting one PhD is hard work, but he chose to do two. And rare though it is for theoretical physicists to work in more than one field, Sinha mastered […]
A Brief History of CEDT: A Personal Account
The Centre for Electronics Design and Technology (CEDT, now the Department of Electronic Systems Engineering) was established in 1975. The initiative for this Indo-Swiss collaboration was taken by Arvind Shah, who recounts the events in this 2014 memoir. After finishing my studies in Electrical Engineering at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zürich, […]
BS Sonde: ‘Electronics was becoming all-important, but we had done very little’
BS Sonde, retired professor of electrical communication engineering, was the founding chair of the Centre for Electronics Design and Technology (CEDT), renamed the Department of Electronic Systems Engineering in 2012. In this interview, he recalls why the need for CEDT was felt, and how it was founded with Swiss collaboration. What were the developments from […]
Remembering SR Valluri
A tribute to the life and achievements of the IISc alumnus who left his mark on Indian aerospace engineering The name of Dr Sitaram Rao Valluri, who passed away on 23 January 2019, aged 94, will forever be linked with the National Aeronautical Laboratory (NAL; now National Aerospace Laboratories). Valluri had many stellar accomplishments in […]
If I Had a Smartphone Then, I Would Have Taken Selfies with CV Raman
On 8 February 1966, 18-year-old Uma Jagannath began her career as Readers’ Assistant at IISc, even before her results were out. She had just written her Diploma examination in library science at the Government Polytechnic for Women, Bangalore. After getting her results, she was immediately made the Library Assistant. In an interview with Connect, […]
Dining at IISc
A short history of the messes In 1954, Morris Travers, who had been IISc’s first Director, wrote to AG Pai, the then-Registrar. In a letter looking back on his time at IISc, Travers (who had worked at theInstitute from 1906 to 1914, and had been involved in setting it up) said: “When I first went […]
Monkey Business
A 1963 memo about a certain kind of ‘pest’ on campus IISc offers a home to a range of flora and fauna, from the slender loris to stray dogs, and has a number of visitors passing through, including rare birds such as the Kashmir flycatcher. In a circular from the Archives, dated 26 April 1963, […]