How scientists learned to see it coming A failed monsoon triggered the Great Famine of 1876-1878, which killed an estimated 5-10 million people in India. The tragedy sent officials in the British Raj into a frenzy, and the Indian Meteorological Department was tasked with preparing a seasonal forecast of the Southwest Monsoon rains. At […]
Research before the digital era When Raghavendra Gadagkar, Professor and National Science Chair at the Centre for Ecological Sciences (CES), IISc, was a graduate student, he came across a 1958 article in Scientific American by American psychologist Eckhard H Hess. Hess had done research on imprinting in animals and written about how early experiences […]
Picture a typical morning at the Indian Institute of Science in the early 1980s. Three attenders set out on bicycles, each assigned to a different part of the sprawling campus. Their task is to collect the day’s mail. They stop at departments and offices along their route, gathering letters, handwritten notes, official messages, and […]
Is it dead? Is it alive? Surely it has to be either, right? Consider a cat in a box – let’s call him Meownstein. Along with him inside the box, there is a radioactive sample (which can decay to produce radiation) and a poison vial with a radiation sensor. If the sample decays, the […]
A brief history of IISc hostels To the south-west of the IISc Main Building, a stone’s throw away stands a rather squat piece of architecture. The ground floor construction is of grey-brown rock, cut and piled in rectangles of various sizes. The first floor is painted with what must have been a shade of […]
How its understanding has changed through the years The year was 1919. May was approaching and so was graduation season at the University of California, Berkeley in the USA. A young undergraduate student was in deep distress. One of his professors, William Bray, had assigned a paper to be submitted before the end of […]
The enduring legacy of the JRD Tata Memorial Library In the late hours of the night, the bustling and lively IISc campus halts to a slight murmur. The streets are deserted; the silence is broken only by the slow pacing of the night guards and dogs barking at nothing in particular. In this dark […]
Can it help us understand the unknown universe? One day in the spring of 1543, a canon named Nicolaus Copernicus, lying on his sickbed, suddenly awoke from a coma that he had been put under because of a brain stroke. Resting beside him was the first copy of his magnum opus: De revolutionibus orbium […]
How NS Govinda Rao laid the foundation for civil engineering A photo of a moustachioed bespectacled man looks down from the wall of the office of the Department of Civil Engineering at IISc. A few steps further, in the Chairperson’s office, another portrait watches on from above the door. It is fitting that NS […]
