Rajesh Kochhar

Rajesh Kochhar

The award of 2009 Nobel peace prize to Barack Obama  is a new experiment. It is like advance payment for goods to be delivered.

A science Nobel prize  opens up the field for future Nobel prizes. But peace is a goal. If all the Nobel peace prize winners in the past 100 years had actually deserved it , the prize itself should have become redundant by now.

Obama is the best thing that has happened to US and the world at large in a long time.For the sake of humankind one hopes he would succeed.

But at the moment the Nobel peace prize for President Barack Obama looks  more like an honorary doctorate.

Rajesh Kochhar

DIMENSIONS of SCIENCE Lecture on 10 June 2003 at India International Centre, New Delhi

War and pornography have played a significant role in the development of information and communication technology (ICT). Both war and porn are manifestation of baser instincts in man and therefore demand a certain degree of perseverance from their patrons. War, or more correctly the preparation therefor, represents state support to the hilt for creation of a new technology, whereas porn represents select public support during its teething days, paving the way for eventual widespread and varied use.

When a new technological process or product is first introduced or used, it is in response to a felt need. Very soon however it generates a momentum of its own, drawing into its fold new adherents whose needs could not have been anticipated before. History of science and technology provides many examples of this.

Innovator vis-à-vis user

By liberating human enquiry from the constraints of physiology, telescope transformed astronomy (and science). Yet telescope was not invented by an astronomer. More importantly, it could not have been invented by an astronomer. It was a spectacle-maker, already in possession of convex and concave lenses, who combined the two, by accident or otherwise, to create an instrument that could see far. Not surprisingly, the very first use envisaged for telescope was in spotting  enemy ships hours before they became visible to the unaided eye. That was in 1608. Almost four centuries later, Hubble space telescope liberated optical astronomy from the constraints imposed by earth’s atmosphere. Yet again, space telescope was not the first one in space. There were others before it, placed in orbit face down by military for spying on terrestrial targets. Obviously, fear of the enemy is a bigger driving force than love of stars.

It did not take terrorists long to recognize that hiding their messages in soft-porn pictures through internet provides them with a safe and convenient way of keeping in touch with one another. Similarly an underworld don has discovered the virtues of being in jail. State protects him from his blood – thirsty rivals while mobile phone permits him to run his business uninterruptedly.

Combination of live sports commentary and wireless telephony has revitalized Satta trade. Havala operators have also upgraded their modus operendi. They no longer use a currency note expressly torn into two as an identifier, but the innocuous cell phone number. In all these cases, a system developed by others for their own purpose has been put to good use by new entrants. Chillingly, internet has opened entirely new vistas for child abusers who can now form an alliance among themselves and target their victims safely and unobtrusively.

The above examples illustrate a general “law”. The bigger the beneficiary of an innovation, the less their chances of having been its author.

The rather eventful journey of a technological product from its inception till mass use can be broadly understood in the framework of a new model involving three-overlapping stages (ECM model)

ECM model

I. Experimental stage. This stage belongs to the technologists and specialists who create and develop a new product over a period of time to a level that it can be made available to the non-specialist for use.

II. Committed-use stage. This class of user, by virtue of his commitment, remains undaunted by the defects and shortcomings of the new product, gives it vital support in its nascent state and thereby helps its further development to a stage where it can be considered user friendly, and economically viable.

III. Mass-use stage. This stage is characterized by what we may call “Moronification of technology”, whereby a technology is simplified to such an extent that it can be used without application of mind or without any attendant risk. The product is now ready for mass use, which as stated earlier generates its own momentum, and creates its own culture freeing the technology from its previous history.

Colt’s revolver: A case study

We shall now apply the ECM model to the case history of revolver, a major 19^th century technological product invented by Samuel Colt (1813-1862) in USA. Working as a sailor on a ship bound for London and Calcutta and by observing the ship’s wheel, or possibly the windlass, Colt in 1831 came up with the idea of a gun with a revolving cylinder that could fire multiple shots from a single barrel. He first made a crude model in wood and then got prototypes made by a gunsmith. In 1835 he patented his revolver in England and France. Next year he received a US patent and started production. The period 1831-1836 corresponds to the first, Experimental, stage of the model.

The second, Committed-user, stage may be said to last from 1836 to 1873 with major patronage and incentives for improvement coming from the military. An ordinary rifle required time for reloading and therefore could be fired only once or twice in a minute. In the same time however a native American could devastatingly fire 20 arrows. Repeating firearms would be extremely effective against arrows, and the US military did order some from Colt. But since there were not too many native Americans to be shot, the number of orders was small, and the Colt company collapsed.

Colt’s fortunes were revived with the war against Mexico in 1847, when the government placed bulk orders for revolvers and rifles. American civil war, California gold rush, colonization of American west, Crimean war and demand from Europe all brought tremendous prosperity to Colt, and improvements in his death machines. Early guns were very heavy, complicated, “easily fouled up”, and potentially lethal to the shooter. The last defect was remedied in 1873, with the development of the metallic-cartridge revolver, the mainstay of a model ironically called Peacemaker, which soon became not only the standard issue of the US army but also the most popular gun in the west. In the committed use stage, the revolver was aimed at a designated enemy; in its mass-use stage, it could be aimed at friends and strangers also.

Internet

Internet is a child of fear. It was created to withstand a nuclear war. A traditional communication system collects all information at a central control, processes it and then sends it somewhere else. This system would collapse if a nuclear attack destroyed the central control. US Defence department in mid-1960s started funding research to create a computer network without a central control system. The key to the new network was “packet switching”. A dataset was broken into small packets, each labelled with the destination address. Once they arrive at the destination, the packets would be reassembled. It does not matter in what order and by what route a packet reaches its destination. A packet could be sent to an intermediary site. If this site was not working or was processing slowly, the packet would find another route and eventually reach its destination. This internet is based on a principle similar to the old Indic philosophy: Destination is important, not the route. Internet is decentralized by design and inherently anarchic. Neither can its connectivity be thwarted nor the content censored. Therein lie internet’s strengths and risks.

The first network created in 1969 was called ARPAnet, after the funding agency, namely Advanced Research Projects Agency. In 1972, internet e-mail address incorporated the now-familiar @ sign. In January 1983, a new protocol called Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol was introduced to handle a large number of hosts in the network. The same year ARPAnet was split into ARPAnet and MILnet, both remaining under Defence department. It is a measure of the role of military in the early years of internet that as many as 68 of the 113 nodes went to MILnet. (ARPAnet would be closed in 1990).

In the early 1980s, a number of large and small specialist networks came up including the one for high-energy physicists. It is this network that created World Wide Web, in 1989, which enables a computer to access information stored elsewhere. Web’s ability to transmit moving and stationary images and sound gave internet a vitality, creators of web or net could never have imagined. Web was thrown open to public in 1991. The term “surfing the net” was coined in 1992, and the net itself was commercialized in 1995.

The period from ARPAnet (1969) to commercialization of web-fortified internet (1995) is then the Experimental stage of our ECM model.

Table 1. Internet: Experimental stage 1969 ARPAnet established 1972 @ sign introduced in e-mail address 1983 TCP/IP introduced as regulatory protocol. ARPAnet split into ARPAnet and MILnet, both under US Defence department. 68 out of the 113 nodes went to MILnet 1989 World Wide Web created 1990 ARPAnet closed 1991 Web released for public use 1992 Term “surfing the net” coined 1995 Internet commercialized

Committed-use stage

(Please note that in the following no moral judgement is made on the website content)

Porn sites were among the very first ones on commercialized net. Sex has always sold, but never so well as on the net. Porners have benefitted from the net, and strengthened it in the process. Porn sites have contributed at three levels: technological innovations; standardization; and lessons for mainstream business.

Since porn sites did not get any support from venture funds, they had to make money and quickly. They acquired top-class hardware and high bandwidths, and went on to hire thousands of highly skilled workers like network engineers, programmers and graphic designers. They gave valuable business to companies like Sun Microsystems and Silicon Graphics. In a little publicized incident, when a porn portal clandestinely arranged to route calls from a client through more expensive lines, it had the technical expertise of AT&T at its disposal.

To many porn customers who were abashed to visit a traditional sex shop, e-commerce came as a godsend. No wonder porners have been pioneers in e-commerce. They were the first to accept credit cards for on-line payment and to use shopping-cart technology. Porn sites have been the earliest adopters of innovations such as streaming video. Porn-site profits often reach 30%, compared to a paltry 0.2% profit in online stock trading. Getting over their early revulsions, mainstream companies like Disney and Warner Brothers are trying to benefit from technologies and business practices originating from porn services.

In the early years, porn sites accounted for as much as 80% of total e-commerce revenue. The figure has since come down to about 20%, signifying transition from the Committed-use stage to Mass-use stage for the internet.

Mobile internet

In the early 1980s Europe had a number of analog cellular telephone systems, operating within boundaries of different countries, incompatible with one another in equipment and operation. Keeping in mind requirements of a unified Europe, expanded market for each type of equipment, and advantages of economy of scale in 1982, Europe set up a study group called Groupe Special Mobile (GSM) to study and develop a pan-European mobile system. GSM standard was issued and commercial service started mid 1991. The most basic teleservice provided by GSM is telephony. Additionally, a number of data services are also offered. A unique feature of GSM, not found in older analog systems, is the SMS (Short Messaging Service) whereby short alphanumeric messages can be sent. Messages can also be stored in the SIM card for later retrieval. GSM systems now exist on every continent and account for 65% of the world’s mobile networks. Very aptly, GSM now stands for Global System for Mobile communication.

SMS is an example of a peripheral feature that caught on without the knowledge of network operators and went on to become the mainstay of the system. SMS was rather difficult to use. It was left to the young people to master the technique and use the service, developing in the process a whole new economical language of their own, combining letters, numbers and other symbols. While a phone call cost money, SMS was free. Network operators were technically unable to bill pre-pay customers for SMS. The technologically savvy young mobile – owners made use of this loophole to the hilt. It is only after seeing the huge popularity of SMS that the network operators rose to change prepay customers for SMS messages.

Next generation of mobile phones will provide internet connectivity, which means that it will be possible to view pictures and video on the screen of a mobile phone. Operators have paid an exorbitant $ 1 bn as license fees for running 3G mobile services in Europe. Unfortunately for them 3G has miserably failed to repeat the technological success of GSM. Much of the money spent by operators on 3G is already considered unrecoverable. “The only services that are likely to generate the necessary revenues to pay for the licenses will be thoroughly unsavoury ones such as pornography, gambling, and worse”. A great advantage of buying pornography over a mobile network is that billing can be handled by the operator without the subscriber having to submit credit card details over the internet. Many porn groups have signed agreements with operators in Britain and Spain as well as several other European operators for porn-related SMS.

“In new technologies, adult services usually account for 80 per cent of traffic. It has been so with video, the internet and DVD. It is natural to assume it will be the same with mobile internet”, according to CEO of an “adult services” company.

To sum up, baser instincts of man play a major role in the development of science and technology. Sad but true.

Rajesh Kochhar

Invited  talk delivered at XXVII General Assembly of International Astronomical Union  Special Session 4: Astronomy Education between Past and Future, Rio de Janeiro 6 August 2009

A man is wise with the wisdom of his age only,

and ignorant with its ignorance.    -Henry David Thoreau

History is an exercise in constructing the past carried out in the present with an eye on the future. Thus, paradoxical as it may seem , history converts the past into a bridge between the present and the future. As our perception of today and expectations from tomorrow change, our interpretation of yesterday must also accordingly change.

Human beings are an astronomical species. Ever since they learnt to walk upright they have looked at the sky and wondered. The sky has remained the same, but not its meaning. Astronomy is thus simultaneously a state-of-art intellectual enquiry as well as a symbol of the collectivity and continuity of humankind’s endeavours to come to terms with their cosmic environment. This collectivity can be conveniently discussed in terms of a three-phase model comprising (i) propitiatory phase; (ii) negotiatory phase; and (iii) the modern, curiosity-driven, impersonal phase.

To begin with, sky was home to divinities who were to be feared and appeased. As time progressed, human beings felt more secure and became intellectually more alert. Earlier awe made way for curiosity. Sky was now seen as a phenomenon which could be described The knowledge thus gained was employed to renegotiate the equation with celestial bodies. (iii) The third phase nominally began with Copernicus but took off with Galileo. Sky was now the abode of laws of nature which could be discovered and tested. Earlier astronomy had measured angles; now it could ascertain distances. The sky had acquired depth literally as well as figuratively. It is the transition from phase 2 to phase 3 which concerns us here.

Cultural Copernicanism

Post- world war II decades have ushered in an age which we may call the age of Cultural Copernicanism . In analogy with the cosmological principle that the universe has no preferred location or direction, principle of Cultural Copernicanism would assert that no cultural or geographical area or ethnic or social group can be deemed to constitute a superior entity or a benchmark for judging or evaluating others. This principle argues for a Trans-Cultural Civilizational Perspective whereby modern astronomy (or science in general) is seen not as a western brand but as the current phase of human cultural cumulus to which contributions at different times have come from different parts of the world.

This framework however is a recent development. Historiography developed in the long 19^th century consciously projected modern science ( including modern astronomy) as a characteristic produce of western civilization, decoupled from and superior to its antecedents, with the implication that all material and ideological benefits arising from it ( and modern technology) were reserved for its authors.

As a reaction to this, the orientalized east has often tended to view modern astronomy as western astronomy , and sought to defend, protect and reinvent its “own” heritage. This defensive mindset works against the propagation of modern astronomy in many non-western countries.

It also warps their own accounts of their history. Those who act can retract, but those who react continue doing so.

Those to whom evil is done

Do evil in return. - W.H. Auden

If we wish to create enthusiasm for (modern) astronomy and teach it effectively, especially in geographical areas which have memories of their astronomical past, we must create links to the past and situate modern astronomy in a more extended evolutionary sequence.

Even for researchers, educators and students in astronomically advanced countries, a universal history of astronomy would be professionally beneficial and culturally satisfying. It will bring home the important lesson that at all times, including today, scientific breakthroughs have taken place only when inputs are received from diverse sources.

19th century historiography:Suggested correctives

There are two aspects to be considered: (A) How Europe constructed its own history of astronomy and (B) how it described earlier developments especially in India and the Muslim cultural zone (MCZ). (I am unable to say any thing about developments , e.g., in China.)

Greek science

My own assessment is that science in Europe would have developed exactly the way it did even if Greek science did not exist. This is because of the dynamism created by maritime voyages and the exorbitant profits therefrom. Europe however took its science’s roots back to ancient Greece. And stopped there. It refused to go into the antecedents of Greek science itself . Hellenic and Hellenistic periods were presented as a monolith so that by association Homer and Aristarchus would reinforce each other.

Greek science could arise only after Alexander. His conquests brought Greeks to the older civilizations of Egypt and Iraq, which had large surplus economies, vast geographical extent, higher levels of practical knowledge and technological advancements. These, when combined classical Greece’s intellectual prowess, gave rise to “Greek science”. But it did not suit Europe of the time to give any credit to Africa or Asia.

Terms like Hindu astronomy and Arab astronomy are isolationist and were intended as such. Moreover they are misleading. The word Hindu was not in use in 500 CE. And .as Ibn - Khaldoon pointed out , “ most Muslim scholars both in the religious and in the intellectual sciences have been non-Arabs”. Unfortunately, these terms continue to be used by sheer force of habit. They should be discarded in favour of purely descriptive terms like Siddhantic astronomy and Zij astronomy.

More generally, serious thought needs to be applied to the vocabulary employed. Words do not have any intrinsic meaning; they carry the meaning given to them. Some terms may appear innocuous to astronomers, but they may carry their own baggage from other area studies.

With reference to earlier epochs, terms like pre-scientific or ascientific astronomy have been employed even in serious literature. In contrast , ethno-astronomy or cultural astronomy may appear more acceptable , but they have their own shortcomings. They appear to be patronizing and an exercise in exoticism. ( All human activity including the modern scientific is cultural)

I have seen the use of term rational astronomy to refer to the modem phase. This seems to suggest that in earlier phases people made a distinction between the rational and the irrational and deliberately chose the irrational!

May be terms like solsticial (equinoctial) astronomy or colure astronomy or cardinal point astronomy can be used, because they are purely descriptive and not tainted by any association.

Incidentally, we routinely use geographical terms like India, China, and Egypt while discussing their antiquity. But an exception is made in case of Iraq which is invariably described in such difficult-to-comprehend terms like Mesopotamia, Babylonia, Chaldea, etc. This tends to decouple modern Iraq from its rich heritage. Why is this so?

Copernicus

Greek science was one of the big bangs for 19^th century Euro-centric historiography; Copernicus was another. Some of the earlier accounts give the impression that he was not a product of his time at all , but was merely  taking sides in the  old dispute between Aristarchus’ heliocentrism and Ptolemy’s geocentrism.

Al-Tusi

The common use of a term like Arabic numerals raises the hackles of Indians who consider it to be a case of mis-branding. (This is true. ( Arabic/Persian call them Hind-se’, from India.) But terms like Arabic numerals and Algorithm, after Al-Khwarizmi, draw attention to an important historical fact , namely, arrival of intellectual inputs from MCZ into Europe.

What did Europe do with these inputs? More specifically, did they go into the making of Copernicus? Whether Al-Tusi deserves to be elevated from a lowly , early 19^th century, footnote to the 21^st century main text needs to engage the attention of present-day scholars, in a non-parochial context.

A universal history of astronomy would transcend patriotisms of all kinds.

Buddhists and Arabs

Arabs were  dismissively told that there role had been no more than as librarians and archivists for preserving  Greek science till Europe was in a position to take its heritage back. And yet, when Indians in their own context pointed out that in earlier times the Buddhists had  worked extensively  on health-related  chemistry , they were told with a straight face that  when their ancient texts mention Buddhist , they probably meant Arabs! Surely Arabs would have liked to hear that. But it was not considered necessary to inform them.

From about 500 CE till Kepler’s time , Indian astronomers were probably the only ones in the world who could calculate an eclipse with any reasonable accuracy. Disdainfully they were told that there was nothing original in their astronomy; it was a tame imitation of the Greeks. Indians did not retort that the only way to build an intellectual tradition is to absorb extant knowledge and build on it. Instead they weakly argued that the Greek borrowing was in astrology and not in astronomy, as if the distinction would have made any sense 2000 years ago.

Indians take pride in the appreciation earned by Indian texts in Baghdad, but are themselves less than liberal in acknowledging the role of Greco-Babylonian inputs around 1^st century CE in revitalizing their Vedic astronomical tradition.

Since racial purity is an absolute no-no now , great emphasis is being placed on cultural purity. It is like discovering therapeutic virtues in distilled water.

Unlike the MCZ, Indian astronomical developments did not impinge Europe directly. The main concern of Siddhantic astronomers was the computation of planetary orbits. In the process they solved many equations which as formal mathematics caught Europe’s interest much later. Should they be the concern of only Indian historians?

History of astronomy functions at two levels. At one level we are interested in tracing the historical trajectory which leads to recent developments. But examination of high points that do not lie on the trajectory is also a legitimate field of enquiry. To put it attractively, if history has its compulsions, it also has its romances.

Thomas Godfrey’s 1730 invention of sextant in Philadelphia a year before Hadley invented it “ independently” the next year in England is an example of romance of history . Similarly European pre-history of telescope before Hans Lippershey’s commercial invention in 1608 is a fascinating subject. This line of enquiry should be extended to include similar episodes from other culture areas as well.

To sum up

Astronomy as a modern scientific discipline stands apart from most others in the sense that iy is collaborative rather than competitive. No person howsoever important, no nation howsoever powerful, no observatory howsoever well equipped is permitted a view of the whole celestial sphere.

It is a significant arrangement by nature that to know where you are located on the earth you must take the help of the sky ( stars/satellites).There is a rather obscure theorem in applied mathematics, known as Lichtenstein’s theorem, which tells you that for a rotating body like the earth the distinction between north and south along with the existence of equator is a mathematical fact , but the distinction between east and west is completely arbitrary.

We are all committed to the world-wide propagation of astronomical sciences. I have argued that to facilitate the task we must construct a universal history of astronomy so that every one feels they have contributed to it in the past and must do in the present and future as well.

Even otherwise an inclusive history is good for the world’s general wellness.

Sunday Times of India, 14 July 1991

Rajesh Kochhar

[This essay reviews Kameshwar C. Wali’s authorized biography of Subramanya Chandrasekhar, titled Chandra. The review was written when Chandrasekhar was still alive. I sent him a copy. His response makes interesting reading. He wrote in a personal letter dated 5 Aug 1991: “It is always interesting to read upon aspects of the book different reviewers select to comment. In this instance, there seems to be systematic difference between the reviewers in the “West” [his quotes]. When the biography came out in paperback, the blurb carried excerpt from this review. Subsequently I published two newspaper articles on Chandrasekhar, which may be seen as companion pieces:

R. Kochhar (1995) Transcending the limits: Chandrasekhar’s stellar contribution. Times of India, 19 Oct.]

R. Kochhar (1999) India-born U.S. astrophysicist. Chandra Observatory: Tribute to a legend. The Tribune, 27 Jul. {Cited in Wikipedia}

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Chandrasekhar symbolises the practice of science at its noblest. A man of integrity, modesty, and exceptionally high standards, he is “the kind of person for whom and through whom the university existed”. His personality, like his mathematics, is self-consistent; there are no kinks, aberrations or loose ends. It is difficult to decide whether his research is an extension of his personality or whether his personality has been mounded by his research.Perhaps there has been a symbiotic relationship between the two.

Chandra’s life story by his compatriot Kameshwar C. Wali, himself a physics professor in the USA, is a labour of love. The biographer has reconstructed Chandra’s life mainly from material supplied by Chandra himself and has added his own comments and notes, at the end, which provide useful background material.

The best part of book starts after the author’s description of Chandra’s life. Entitled ‘Conversation with Chandra’, it describes in Chandra’s own words his thoughts on himself, his colleagues and his times. The book comes alive in these pages through Chandra’s sensitivity and honesty. Of special interest to Indian readers will be his views on men and matters in India.

This is not a scientific biography. As the author says, “it is biography of an individual whom I admired from a distance for many years.” It provides a splendid insight into the working of a great contemporary mind, and can be read with profit by lay persons for enlightenment, and by scientists for introspection.

Chandra - as he is universally known – wrote his first research paper in 1929 when he was an 18-year-old under -graduate at Presidency College, Madras. His uninterrupted research career, spanning six decades and three continents, has been marked by mathematical rigor and elegance. The award of a Nobel Prize in 1983 made him into science’s show boy and he found this rather unbecoming.

Chandra come of age a a time when western education had taken root in India; when modern physics was being founded in Europe; when the Imperial government in India has developed a mild sense of noblesse oblige; and when nationalism was assert in in self.

In 1930, when he was travelling from Delhi to Madras by first class (his father worked for the Railways), an English memsahib loudly expressed her disgust at having to share the compartment with a native, but added that at least he was in European dress. Chandra promptly left the compartment and returned in the typical south Indian dress of shirt and veshti.

Then again, Chandra once missed classes to go and listen to Jawaharlal Nehru who was visiting Madras. The principal, shocked to find Chandra among the “culprits”, exclaimed: ‘you too!’ But this did not prevent the college from creating a special scholarship to enable their brilliant student to go to England. Not surprisingly while the government did not hesitate to create a special scholarship to send Chandra to Cambridge for his PhD it would not create a job for him in India when he wanted to return.

In 1933 Chandra got his PhD and also the Fellowship of Trinity College which, 16 years previously, had been held by another Indian, Srinivasa Ramanujam. He now returned to the important question: what happens to a star once it is has burnt all its nuclear fuel? The leading lights of the day claimed that they already knew the answer: All stars finally retired as earth-sized white dwarfs.

Chandra was the first one to apply the theory of special relativity to understand the behaviour of stars. In his 1930 voyage out of India, he had done preliminary work on the topic and to remove all doubts about the results, he now got down to working out a complete, rigorous mathematical theory without taking any short-cuts.

Chandra found that all stars do not end up as white dwarfs, only low mass ones do. As to what happens to bigger stars, Chandra’s answer must rank as the understatement of the century: “. . . one is left speculating on other possibilities”. No white dwarf can be bigger than the Chandrasekhar mass limite, that is 1.4 times the mass of the sun. The “other possibilities” are the neutron star and the black hole, as even a school student knows today.

In January 1935, Chandra presented his results at the London meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society. He was hoping to be warmly received by the astronomical community for his path-breaking research, little realising what he was in for. Sir Arthur Eddington, the most influential astronomer of the time, stood up to present his own results and tore Chandra to pieces, not by pointing out mistakes in his analysis but by ridiculing him, not by logic but by rhetoric. Sir Arthur did not believe in black holes. With a haughtiness one associates with Viceroys rather than scientists, he declared, “I think there should be a law of nature to prevent a star from behaving in this absurd manner.”

Sir Arthur was blinded by his self-righteousness; the others by the glare of his self-righteousness; the others by the glare of his personality. It was not that one hypothesis was competing with another.It was an exact mathematical theory that was pitted against a refusal to listen. A desperate Chandra tried to enlist support form among the international community of astronomers and physicists. There was however no one who had the time or the courage to sit down with paper and pencil and see through the hollowness of Eddington’s arguments. After four long frustrating years Chandra gave up.

Having pitted himself against the dons of Cambridge and Oxford, young Chandra had no chance of a job in Britain or even Europe. The United States of America offered to take him in: “Out there, we don’t believe in Eddington”. Chandra left Sir Arthur’s England as well as the white dwarfs and headed for the University of Chicago in 1937 where he has remained ever since. He was the first non-white on the faculty of the university, which was, he puts it, “30 years ahead of its time”.

A lesser man would have been traumatized by the experience. But Chandra confronted the situation stoically and raarranged his thoughts. For one, he decided to never become an Eddington himself. He would retain a “certain modesty of approach”, and an open-mindedness. (In 1984, when I wrote to Chandra pointing out a mistake in one of his papers, his reply was warm and prompt; “Publish your results”) The second lesson Chandra learnt from the episode was even more momentous. He would never again try to canvass support for his work. He would let it speak for itself. Mathematics would be his only ally, and time his judge.

In a book that is now a classic, Chandra put down what he knew about white dwarfs and closed the topic. In his never-ending “quest for perspectives”, he would take up a new topic, work on it for a number of years, write a monograph, and move on.

All his work carries a uniform stamp of scholarship. And his later work tends to be the last word on the subject, unlike his early work on the white dwarfs, which was the first word. The first word took a long time to sink in. Chandra has won a number of prestigious awards, but for a long time there was no reference to his white dwarf work. In fact it was only in 1974, 40 years after the work, that a prize mentioned this work.

The belated Nobel Prize in 1983 tried to set things right. His citation refers to the work on white dwarfs “accomplished when he was in his 20s”. As if to compress the intervening time, the citation also mentions two pieces of later work on the relativistic instability of stars done in the ’60s.

It is futile to speculate what course Chandra’s life would have taken if the had won Sir Arthur’s support in 1935. There is, however, no doubt that Sir Arthur’s obduracy delayed the development of the subject by a generation. The recent work on neutron stars and black holes would certainly have been done in the late 30s and 40s as a natural extension of Chandra’s pioneering work.

Chandra has been good for American science. He would drive 100 miles, week after week, to teach a class of two American-Chinese students, both of whom went on to win the 1957 Nobel Prize. He has trained many generations of students and researchers, and taken extraordinary pains to set the standards for astronomical research journals.

Chandra has always kept in touch with India. It was his efforts that brought to light Srinivasa Ramanujan’s passport photograph, the basis for all later photographs, etchings and sculpture. As Chandra says, finding Ramanujan’s photograph has been one of his important discoveries.

From an Indian point of view, it is unfortunate that the country of his birth was not the theatre of his activities. Unlike Har Gobind Khurana who required sophisticated laboratories for his work, all Chandra has ever needed is a library and students. It is not that he did not try, or that India didn’t. He tried before independence, and India afterwards.

The first jog offer to Chandra came from Sir C.V. Raman, Chandra’s father’s younger brother and the director of the Tatas-sponsored Indian Institute of Science (IIS) Bangalore. He was offered an assistant professorship. Chandra’s father’s response was electric: “ My advice is keep out of his orbit.” Having an overbearing uncle in the family was enough of strain. Having him as boss would have been impossible. Not only did Chandra not want a job in his uncle’s institute, he also did not wand it through his influence.

In 1935 Chandra was interested in a mathematics professorship at Government College, Lahore (his birth place). But he withdrew when he came to know about the candidacy of S. Chowla, a personal friend “whose work and abilities I greatly admire”.

Chandra’s election as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1944 (for which he was supported by Eddington) enhanced his job prospects in India. He was offered the directorship of the Kodaikanal Observatory, for which he was ill equipped. He could not do observational work and did not want to do administrative work. He asked for a comparable post where he would do his theoretical research. Nothing came of it, just as his earlier attempts to find reader’s post at a university had yielded nothing. While sending Chandra to Cambridge was good for Cambridge, creating a job for him in India would have been good for the Indians but Imperial Government was not interested.

A positive offer came from Dr Homi Bhabha in 1951 when he was building the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) Bombay. Chandra was tempted, but not strongly enough. Soon after, he became a US citizen, and conditions changed drastically. In 1961 the CSIR, on instructions from Jawaharlal Nehru, offered him a national professorship, provided he relinquished his foreign citizenship.

Again, in 1963 when Dr Bhabha died, the government, forgetting that Chandra was no longer an Indian citizen, offered him the chairmanship of the Atomic Energy Commission. Of all the offers Chandra received, the most attractive was Dr Bhabha’s Looking back, he now feels that perhaps he should have accepted it, but at the time he was not quite sure whether he would fit in.

Chandra had had a ringside view of Indian science, first as Sir Raman’s nephew and then in his own right, and he did not like what he saw. The Trimurti of Indian physics: Raman, Meghnad Saha, and S.N. Bose, especially the first two, were always at each other’s throats. K.S. Krishnan, who worked with Raman but did not share the Noble Prize, was Chandra’s friend. (Chandra later obtained a copy of his diary for the Royal Society.)

Chandra liked Dr Bhabha and his cosmopolitanism but was dismayed by his autocracy. Once when Wolfgang Pauli and other foreign scientists came to India, they were transported in a bus. Dr Bhabha followed them in his limousine. An enraged Wolfgang Pauli left the country the next day.

Chandra did not want administrative power, but was not sure whether he would be academically free if he did not occupy the top slot himself. Raman’s advice was blunt: “Don’t play second fiddle”. The very fact that the concept of “first or second fiddle” existed put Chandra off.

The Chandra of British India had to leave his country for the sake of science. And the tragedy of independent India lies in the fact that if a Chandra, who wants academic freedom without administrative power or interference, were to appear today, he would still have to go into exile.