In an interview with Shekhar Gupta on NDTV 24×7’s Walk the Talk. From The Indian Express:
Tell us about your journey in science — you started off as a physicist.
Venkatraman Ramakrishnan: I originally thought I might go to medical school. And I got admitted to the Baroda Medical College , but I also appeared for the National Science Talent exam. That was at the encouragement of my mother. I made a deal with my father — that if I got the scholarship, then you shouldn’t force me to do anything. He wanted me to be a doctor. I got the scholarship, and while he was away, I transferred my admission from medical college to study physics. The clerk thought I’d made a mistake, and I actually meant the other way round.
For our generation, the first choice was medicine. Next was engineering. If you failed in both, you went for the IAS.
Venkatraman Ramakrishnan: One thing that motivated me was that a group of professors, some of whom had come back from the US, had completely modernised the curriculum. 30 years later, my son studied basically the same curriculum at Harvard. So that was a motivation for me to go into physics. Somewhere along the line I realised that I was not going to be a good physicist. I would just be doing some boring calculations and not have any real insight. I believe physics is on a difficult plane, because to make truly fundamental breakthroughs in physics is very hard now. At the same time, molecular biology was blossoming. It seemed every week there was an important discovery being made. More:
Pervez Hoodbhoy, chairman of the physics department at Quaid-i-Azam University, in Dawn:
Gen. (retd) Pervez Musharraf, aided by his trusted lieutenant and chairman of the Higher Education Commission, Dr Atta-ur-Rahman, lays claim to a ‘revolutionary programme’ that has reversed the decades-old decline of Pakistan’s universities.
The higher education budget shot up from Rs3.9bn in 2001-02 to an astounding Rs33.7bn in 2006-07. But, in fact, much of this has been consumed by futile projects and mega wastage. Fantastically expensive scientific equipment, bought for research, often ends up locked away in campuses.
An example: a Pelletron accelerator worth Rs400m was ordered in 2005 with HEC funds. It eventually landed up at Quaid-i-Azam University, and was installed last month by a team of Americans from the National Electrostatics Corporation that flew in from Wisconsin. But now that it is there and fully operational, nobody – including the current director – has the slightest idea of what research to do with it. Its original proponents are curiously lacking in enthusiasm and are quietly seeking to distance themselves from the project.
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From NewScientist:
Apart from the human devastation, a small-scale nuclear war between India and Pakistan would destroy much of the ozone layer, leaving the DNA of humans and other organisms at risk of damage from the Sun’s rays, say researchers.
Michael Mills of the University of Colorado at Boulder, US, and colleagues used computer models to study how 100 Hiroshima-sized bombs would affect the atmosphere.
They say that their scenario – in which each country launches 50 devices of 15 kilotons – is realistic, given the countries’ nuclear arsenals.
[Photo: A nuclear bomb is detonated in a test blast at Mururoa atoll, French Polynesia, in 1971./AP]
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University of Colorado at Boulder:
In Harvard Magazine, profile of Lakshminarayanan Mahadevan, professor of applied mathematics:
“Just because something is familiar doesn’t mean you understand it. That is the common fallacy that all adults make-and no child ever does,” says Lakshminarayanan Mahadevan, England de Valpine professor of applied mathematics. Mahadevan enjoys explaining mathematically the phenomena of everyday life: practicing the old-fashioned method of scientific inquiry called natural philosophy, where one wonders about everything.
…Mahadevan, who grew up in India, tells a traditional story about Krishna where mud becomes metaphor. “In Hindu mythology, Krishna is divine,” he begins. “However, because there was a prophecy that he would overthrow an evil king, his origins when he was a baby were hidden from almost everybody. So when Krishna was born, his mother surreptitiously sent him away to be brought up by a foster mother who didn’t know who he was. As in all mythologies, there were premonitions [of greatness], but growing up with his foster mother, he would go out like all children and play in the mud. One day he started to eat the mud, putting it in his mouth. And his [foster] mother, from afar, said, ‘Don’t do it.’” Krishna kept eating the mud. “Again [she] said, ‘Don’t do it,’ and yet he continued. So she came up to him, and when she opened his mouth to take out the mud, she looked-and she saw the universe.
More: [via 3quarksdaily]
