Keepers of History

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 […]

How a Physicist Became a Mathematician

2023 marks the birth centenary of the influential mathematician Harish-Chandra who spent two important years at IISc   “The book of nature is written in the language of mathematics,” declared the Italian astronomer and physicist Galileo Galilei in an essay titled The Assayer published in 1623. Mathematics is an indispensable tool for physicists who strive […]

A Clique that Clicks

The Photography Club is a forum for students to learn the craft from their peers   During the orientation programme marking the start of the 2012–13 academic year at the Department of Computer Science and Automation (CSA), faculty member Chiranjib Bhattacharyya spoke to the incoming PhD students. In the course of this interaction, he told […]

Expanding the Material-verse

Researchers at IISc are using novel technologies to add to existing materials and to understand material properties   About 2.5 million years ago, our ancestors discovered that striking two pieces of rock against each other produces rough edges and stone chips that could be used to break animal bones and scoop flesh off carcasses. And […]

Redesigning the Genome

An annual synthetic biology competition has spurred UG students to develop novel solutions   In the early 1960s, French scientists Francois Jacob and Jacques Monod figured out how gene expression in bacterial cells is regulated. Since then, scientists began dreaming of manipulating these regulatory circuits in the bacterial genome (the entire set of its genetic […]

Playing the Field

The Gymkhana is ground zero for students interested in sports and arts   At the southwestern end of the main campus of IISc, an overbridge across CV Raman Road connects it to the IISc Gymkhana ground on the other side of the road. The ground, with an area of over 12 acres, has a building […]