Anindita Bhadra, Professor at the Behaviour and Ecology Lab, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Kolkata, does not believe in glorifying women as multitaskers. A former PhD student at the Centre for Ecological Sciences, IISc, Anindita studied hierarchy in social wasps and later shifted to researching the behaviour of stray dogs in India. […]
Can scientists solve the conundrum of consciousness? Sometime in the late 1980s, two Oxford scientists examined PS, a patient who had suffered damage to the right side of her brain. The damage left her unable to notice things to her left. Even when she drew objects, she would draw their right sides perfectly […]
Gursaran Pran Talwar blazed trails in indigenous vaccine development In October 1994, Gursaran Pran Talwar was in a fix. He had only a month to leave the National Institute of Immunology (NII), an organisation that he had built from the ground up, as his tenure was coming to an end. But his work […]
Tracing the contributions of IISc scientists Danish physicist Niels Bohr once had a visitor at his country cottage at Tisvilde. Seeing a horseshoe nailed above the front door, the visitor was amused and asked Bohr if he believed in the superstition that it brought luck. Bohr apparently replied: “No, I certainly do not […]
How NMR is helping scientists probe molecular structures It was after six on a Monday evening in September, and Durga Prasad Hari was in a hurry. Holding a thin glass tube in his hand, he walked quickly to the common instrument facility on the ground floor of the Chemical Sciences building, two […]
Can animal studies be truly objective? In the early 20th century, a horse in Berlin captured the world’s attention with its mathematical proficiency. When asked an arithmetic question, Hans, the horse, would start tapping his hooves and stop when he arrived at the correct number. This remarkable feat elevated Hans’ status to genius. […]
Are we harming the world in our pursuit to understand it better? Around 7 pm on Mondays, Maya can be found in her natural habitat, carefully seeding a culture to be infected the next day or inoculating a batch of bacteria to be genetically transformed. This is where she is on most days, in […]
India needs the right technology and policy to realise a gallium nitride future Harshada Ahire was caught off guard as she opened the door of the Power Electronics Laboratory in the Department of Electrical Engineering (EE) at IISc, as I stepped into the large room. I was with Vinod John, Professor at EE, and Utsab […]
The lensing of waves is helping us look deeper into space Arthur Eddington was growing anxious. It was nearly 2 pm on 29 May 1919. The British astronomer was standing on a plateau overlooking the Atlantic Ocean in the west African island of Príncipe. A rare solar eclipse, not seen in 500 years, […]
Maths is providing new ways to make sense of biology In the early 2000s, a fierce debate was raging among health practitioners about when to start HIV patients on antiretroviral therapy. The standard approach at the time was to delay treatment until the disease had progressed to a critical stage. However, emerging mathematical models […]
