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 […]
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 […]
“Milli”, a group of people interested in archives, organised a series of events for International Archives Week for a second year running. What does it aim to achieve? “I belong to River Teesta, and I belong to Mount Khangchendzonga,” said Minket Lepcha, a filmmaker and former teacher in Darjeeling, before narrating river folklore told […]
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, […]
“I have had no occasion to analyse ganja for the purpose of giving evidence in court” On 26 October 1936, HR Uzielli, Secretary to the Government of Madras, Revenue Department, wrote IISc’s Director a letter about a drug investigation in which an Institute faculty member had been involved. A man named Dandapani Pillai had been […]
A look at the various ways in which scientific research and its history are preserved September 1921. Somewhere on the Mediterranean Sea. Indian physicist CV Raman, sailing from England to Bombay, was pondering over the vivid blue of the water. Lord Rayleigh’s explanation that it was so because of the blue sky above it, didn’t […]
