Meghnad Saha: Work, life, and times

Physics in Perspective, 2015

Peripheral actors rarely make an appearance in the general story of scientific practice, and their work in science is usually viewed as somewhat derivative of the practices of the main community. Contrary to this received model, here I argue that the peripheral contexts of science can be quite important and reveal novel conduits to creative scientific thinking. Not only can such contexts offer us a new window into how contributory expertise in science could be born amid difficult circumstances, they also allow us to see how new scientific communities could be founded during such encounters. Using case studies of M. N. Saha and other physicists in early twentieth-century India, I argue that such modest practices begin when peripheral protagonists seek to initiate new trading zones with the established centers of science. The resulting exchanges can give rise to new breakthroughs and conceptual changes in scientific practice. Such peripheral breakthroughs can be studied cognitively, giving us newer models of scientific practice as well as creating a new kind of self-image for such scientists.

arXiv (Cornell University), 2018

2019

Science and Culture, 2019

Purnima Sinha (nee Sen-Gupta) was the first woman who received D.Phil. degree in Physics from the University of Calcutta. She was also one of the few students who did Ph.D. under the guidance of Professor Satyendranath Bose of Bose-Einstein statistics fame. Since very little is known about her research work done at Calcutta University under Prof. S.N. Bose, the present article has been written with the intention of filling up this gap.

Science Reporter , 2018

Stephen Hawking admired A.K. Raychaudhuri’s contributions to Physics. His contributions are widely recognized by the international scientific community. But AKR remains a hidden figure in his own homeland. Link: http://nopr.niscair.res.in/handle/123456789/45371

Science and Culture, 2021

Half of the 2020 Nobel Prize is awarded for discovering a super-massive black hole at the centre of our Galaxy. One of the first indications of the existence of a black hole at the centre of a galaxy was found by Jennison and Das Gupta in 1953 while carrying on a radio observation of the source Cygnus A. Mrinal Das Gupta, who was doing his PhD at Manchester University at the time of this discovery, spent the major part of his professional career at Calcutta University. We give an outline of Das Gupta's life and explain the scientific significance of his discovery.

Resonance, 2009

Arxiv preprint physics/0602043, 2006

The inward bound path of discovery unravelling the mysteries of matter and the forces that hold it together has culminated at the end of the twentieth century in a theory of the Fundamental Forces of Nature based on Nonabelian Gauge Fields, called the Standard Model of High Energy Physics. In this article we trace the historical development of the ideas and the experimental discoveries on which this theory is based. We also mark significant Indian contributions wherever possible. Finally we have a glimpse at future developments. An Appendix on more Indian contributions is added at the end.