One day at GMRT..

Lately, it appears that the Giant Meterwave Radio Telescope (GMRT), maintained and operated by the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics (NCRA-TIFR), is in the news for all the wrong reasons. Off the Pune-Nashik Road, thirty huge radio antenna of the GMRT nestle in the relatively radio-quiet region near Narayangaon. But the aspirations of the local people, in the form of a proposed Pune-Nashik railway line, threaten its existence. The electromagnetic (and other) noise that would arrive at GMRT with the railway line (proposed to go through Narayangaon) and associated industrial & commercial build up would make GMRT useless for the scientists who strain to hear the faint murmurs of the Universe over and above the man-made radio interference (RFI). It has been suggested that GMRT should 'shift' out.

For a facility like GMRT, built and brought into its present shape through careful planning, continuous modifications and upgrades made possible through dedicated hard work of scientists, engineers and support staff over decades, 'shift' is not an option. It is either allowd to function unhindered or it is shut down. Thankfully, the intervention from the top echelons of the government has ensured that GMRT continues to 'exist' and the proposed railway takes a different route.

Summer of 1988. The Radio Astroonmy Group (TIFR), led by Prof. Govind Swarup, was busy planning and transitioning GMRT from the drawing boards to the hilly terrains of the Junnar taluka, while a group of young undergraduates travelled from the banks of Ganga (in Uttar Pradesh) to the shores of Arabian Sea to take part in the visiting students research program (VSRP, TIFR), likely the first such undergraduate internship program of the country. 

Summer of 2023. Much water has flown down the Ganga and undergraduate research internship has become commonplace. Prof. K Vijayraghavan, former PSA and distinguished alumni of TIFR, now gets the wheels turning for the move forward. It results in the Lodha Genius Program (LGP), a partnership between the Ashoka University and the Lodha Group of Industries, to mentor bright young high-school students and offer them an opportunity for advanced learning.   

Opportune academic connections made one of those VSRP students from 1988, with a head full of white hairs now, to undertake a journey from the land of the Peshwas to a village from the times of Mahabharata (Sonipat or Swarnaprastha, one those five villages that were requested by Pandavas, refused by Kauravas, and eneded up setting the flame of Kurukshetra war aflame) to mentor some of these bright young things a flavour of Astrophysics. :) 

2024. The updated version of the program introduced four-month long follow-up "remote" courses in addition to the summer activities. A bunch of IX-XII graders enrolled for a course very ambitiously titled as 'Physics of Astrophysics'. Despite their myriad exams and engagements, the children made serious effor to learn things that are `out of syllabus', submitted assignments, wrote movie reviews and even composed their own science fiction (SF) stories based on the concepts learnt in the course! Their reward? A trip to GMRT.   

January, 2025. So they arrived, accompanied by their course TA Tannuvi (Physics, Ashoka University) and LGP coordinators Rayhan and Chavi , at NCRA-TIFR, Pune on the 9th of January. From the morning of the 10th, scientists at NCRA-TIFR, my dear friends, happily took time out of their extremely busy schedules and had long sessions with them - telling them about their own research, answering their questions and making them understand what it really means to be a research scientist! The energetic kids showed no signs of tiring after such an intense day and happily trooped down for a visit to the IUCAA science centre, finishing the day off with a bit of stargazing.

With Yashwant Gupta, Centre Director, NCRA-TIFR

Cosmological chat with Tirthankar Roy Choudhury 

'breakfast pe charcha' with Yogesh Wadadekar

Detecting Pulsars with GMRT, Jayanta Roy

Active Galactic Nuclei with Preeti Kharb

Divya Oberoi, the solar physicist.
An impression by Rayhan

Off we went to GMRT, the next morning. Those majestic radio antennae, turning slowly to tune into the faint whispers of celestial sources at distances incomprehensible to the human mind, never fail to impress even those who have seen them again and again. The youngsters were awestruck! Their excitement in trying to understand the workings of the intricate system of motors moving the huge antennae and the complexity of the control room operations, was quite palpable. Getting a glimpse of one of the fastest supercomputers in the world, PARAM-RUDRA, performing five quadrillion calculations per second in an effort to provide insights into the fundamental properties of matter and the universe, added to the experience. 

GMRT Control Room

PARAM-RUDRA, The Supercomputer

After dinner SF session.

Children will be children..

Freindships will be forged..

And adults must tag along.. 
Chavi, Sushan, Rayhan, Tannuvi

It was time to read out their own SF stories, after dinner. Amazing conceptualisation, great writing skills (complete with theatrical rendition in one case) - today's youngsters are really talented! Something else, that has been taking shape all this while, also became very evident at this point. To allow the telescope to function successfully, we must remove as much RFI as possible. So, it is mandatory to switch off the mobile phones. For today's youngsters that is something of a paradigm shift, to not be connected to the world by a small rectangular device. They suddenly found a differnt world, the found the people around them. All of a sudden, intense conversations and exchange of ideas were happening, games were being played in which everyone joined.. Suddenly, all their energy was out in the open instead of being channelled digitally out.. 😊

I could not have asked for a better finale. Of course, it could never have happened without the amazing support of the scientists and the staff of NCRA-TIFR (both at its Pune campus and at GMRT, Khodad). To be honest, they supported the activity not because most of them are personal friends. It has been a long cherished tradition of the GMRT to welcome visitors; in particular, bright young students curious about the workings of the Universe.  

Straddling two worlds (active research and education), as I do at this point of my life, I am thankful to be at this juncture. GMRT allows us, Astrophysicists to sift the data in an attempt to understand the Universe. It also stands sentinel over the next generation, helping them to take the leap from being a curious onlooker to an active scientist trying in not so distant a future. 

The LGP cohort with Kaushal Buch & Team

One week at Ashoka University ..

As far back as I can remember, Science Fiction (SF) has always been THE literary genre which attracted me most. My first encounter with SF must have been those `Mandrake, the magician' comics, replete with Galactic Empires, weird aliens and time-travellers. Then came Ghana-da, the middle-aged eccentric storyteller created by Premendra Mitra, who had very tall tales to tell about himself. Many of these were, in reality, nothing but SF. Satyajit Ray with his `Shonku' stories appeared on my horizon a little later and occupied a prominent place as long as his stories continued to make fresh appearances in various Bangla magazines. For those not in the know, Bengali literature went through a rather serious SF phase (in the '60s and '70s) led by Adrish Bardhan who, apart from being a SF writer himself, edited 'Ashcharja' (the first SF magazine in India) and 'Fantastic' (another Bangla SF magazine).

As physics began to dominate my own existence, my fascination with SF grew. And I began to wonder about which part of an SF was really possible, if not plausible. After joining IIT-Kharagpur, I began to design a course to teach physics using science fiction. I had no idea if it would ever be accepted by the academic programs committee. But there's never any harm in dreaming, is there? Of course, the course didn't happen. Life happened instead. I left Kharagpur and the half-baked plans retreated to the depths of my file-system. 

So, when  Anupama Ambika of Ashoka University contacted me for the Astronomy module of their Lodha Genius Program for school students (classes IX-XII), those plans resurfaced. Here was a great opportunity to teach a bunch of youngsters some facets of Astronomy using science fiction written by some of the great masters. The idea looked good on paper. Ambika too was very enthusiastic. But there was one `little' hitch. Between our young one's preparations for her board exams and her father's travel schedule, I simply didn't have the option of spending a month in Delhi this summer. Thankfully, Sourav (Prof. Sourav Mitra, currently heading the Physics Dept. of Surendranath College, Kolkata) enthusiastically agreed to the idea and was ready to be in Delhi for the major part of the program's duration. It goes without saying that but for Sourav this wouldn't have happened. 

So we picked out some 'hard' SFs, that is, stories that are basically grounded in real physics. The idea was  to look at these stories and see if the events described there conform to the rules of physics. In the end, the young students did a fantastic job of taking the stories apart and performing calculations to check every statement.

In this entire project, Sourav did all the heavy lifting, ably assisted by Anantharaman Viswanathan and Umang Kumar - PhD students at Ashoka. I appeared on the scene towards the end and merely enjoyed the fruits of their labour. It was great seeing the youngsters coming up with all sorts of questions and then gently orienting them towards the 'physics'-y ones. But the most enjoyable part of my time at Ashoka was the long coffee conversations with the young resource persons of our module, with other old friends and visiting the budding Astronomy lab with Dipankar.  

It has been a wonderful time spent with people who I also happen to have interesting connections with. The thread, of course, begins with Dipankar who thought of me for this activity. Then joined Sourav, who happens to be the first student of Tirthankar Roy Choudhury .  Anantha is the latest PhD student of Dipankar (technically, my gurubhai). And Umang works with Suratna Das, wife of Kaushik Bhattacharya with whom I collaborated a long time ago. All in the family, folks. 

[Also, like always, Niruj Mohan Ramanujam has played his very own invisible remote part in this act. ] 

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Here are the stories then.. 

1. Marooned off Vesta : Isaac Asimov, 1939.

2. Neutron Star : Larry Niven, 1966.

3. Summertime on Icarus : Arthur C. Clarke, 1967.

4. Walk in the Sun : Geoffrey Landis, 2001.

5. Cool Neighbour : Jack McDevitt & Miclael Shara, 2009.

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2022 : The year gone by..

 A calendar year ends, another begins. There isn't anything special about this particular space-time point, or about this particular interval of time. A year is just a convenient time-yardstick that Mother Earth has provided us, the puny humans, to measure the tiny ripples of our tiny, insignificant lives against the backdrop of the infinity that we can scarcely perceive of.

Instead of falling down the abyss of the space-time continuum, we are given opportunities to get up, to start afresh, to make new resolutions (however silly and nonsensical most of them may be). So yes, it does make sense to take stock of the year gone by.

My realisation, with a growing sense of incredulity, of the past year (for a while now, in fact) is that TIME has started moving faster and faster. Weren't things supposed to slow down with age? Oh yes! It's relative, my dear Einstein! Age has slowed the body down, taking longer and longer to complete each task. No wonder days fly past, leaving the 'to-do' list hanging in the middle. The rusty old machine is working at a lower RPM! :(

Yet, despite the inevitable march towards a rapidly approaching 'senior-citizen'-hood, life makes it up by opening its rainbow-coloured wonder-box to take sustenance from.  2022, here it is, then.
 

The young one. She crossed her first big exam. Importantly, after some wild oscillations, finally seems to have found clarity about her destination, despite people refusing to give much credence to it. But I am delighted to see her taking purposeful baby steps towards intellectual independence. [And, thank you for our repeated trips to Appa Balwant Chowk, Pune's text-book district, and the mandatory cups of 'chaha'!] 💓

The somewhat older ones, a motley crowd of young undergrads. They have really kept me alive academically through this entire pandemic phase. Some projects done and dusted, some taking roots, and some still sitting at germination trays. But they have been tenacious and resourceful, working through innumerable constraints and hardships. And they have been infinitely patient through all the delays caused by this terrible slowpoke. Meanwhile, a gutsy young lady joined the police force of her state, another landed a superb job at one of the top software companies, yet another poised to begin his PhD in an excellent academic group, and despite circumstances another began her steep climb back towards an academic life. It has been a privilege and a delight to be part of a bit of their journey.😊

[Student & Project supervisor finally meet after a 2-year long (and counting) association, in Hyderabad.] 

Yes, I am equally guilty to a number of hapless collaborators who are waiting and waiting for me to turn in the promised calculation, the write-up, the comments.. Hoping to do better in 2023.

Finally, the senior citizen! Of course, the most treasured experience of 2022 has been being a part Prof. Srinivasan's `Golden' lecture course, delivered to mark the 50-th year of the Astronomical Society of India. Srini, notwithstanding health and other issues, took up the mammoth task of delivering a 40-lecture course on `Introductory Astronomy' for undergraduate STEM students, at the 'tender' age of 80+! I had the responsibility of preparing supplementary material for these lectures. It has been more than a privilege to work with Srini. We still have a few more lectures to go. I shall cherish the experience and the privilege.

[Srini, one of the best Astrophysics teachers in this part of the Galaxy.]

I guess I shall miss 2022 most for bringing me closer to Srini once more. 🙏

 

Nothing political..

The day our past colonial masters went busy pondering over their historical in/out choices, our fifth grader came home happy. After past years' unsuccessful attempts her piece has finally made it to the school magazine. Unlike the Britons we, Indians, are extremely fond of turning every political debate into high-decibel media melodramas played out in the ugliest possible fashion without ever going anywhere near any logical conclusion. No surprise then that a ten year old picked up a political incident to base her essay on.

It was January when submissions for the school magazine were due and the case for certain traffic regulations in the national capital was hogging all the media space in the country. I suppose most of the proffered logic (for or against) went far above the young one's head. And as children typically do, when confronted with long-winded (and usually pointless) adult logic, my daughter too found this entire debate rather funny.

My only reason for posting her magazine piece here is a hope that perhaps the next generation of  citizens would retain their sense of humour. A hope that they would be able to laugh at the absurdities of life and political drama instead of getting drawn into the murky depths of their unsavoury hidden agenda.
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In the land of 'odd-even'..
As you all know, Delhi has recently introduced an odd-even rule. But it is only for cars. I wonder what would happen if such rules were there for other things. For example, cellphones. Then only cellphones with odd numbers could be used on an odd day and the other way around. So many important calls could not be made (or so many unnecessary calls need not be made)! So many things could go wrong! That would be quite horrid. How about making this rule for postal pin-codes? All the places like  shops, schools, restaurants etc. in an odd-numbered pin-code area would be closed on an even day and vice-versa. That would be quite confusing.

Suppose we had this odd-even rule in our school. On an odd day only children with odd roll numbers would come to school. On an even day only even roll numbered children would come. If we had some program in school happening on an odd day and the children with even roll numbers are taking part in it then they would not be allowed to come. And if an odd roll numbered person had his/her birthday on an even day then he/she could not come to school and celebrate with his/her school friends and teachers. Imagine that! Not being able to celebrate your birthday at school. Or how about making the rules for roll numbers in school exams? The children with odd roll numbers would have the exam on  odd days and even roll numbers would have their exams on even days. Even better, on even days only even numbered classes II, IV, VI etc. and on odd days only classes like I, III, V would attend school. Wouldn't that be fun? These are only the things I have thought about. Maybe you can add more to this list. I wonder what sort of odd-even rules people will think of next.
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An unusual book..

From  the time  of the  ancient Indian  'gurukul' to  the present  day academia, the 'guru-shishya'  (teacher-student) relation is inherently asymmetric. The teacher teaches, the  student learns. The teacher assesses,  the teacher  judges and  the student  stays forever  at the receiving end of such evaluations.  And then, once  in an interesting while comes a student's chance of chairing the judge's seat.

Arnab  Rai Choudhuri,  Arnab-da ('elder  brother Arnab') to most of his  Bengali speaking  colleagues and students, is one of my  dear old professors.  In  the physics department of  the Indian Institute of Science (IISc, Bangalore) he  is known as one of the best teachers around and  for people like me he belongs  to that remarkable group  of foreign  returnees who  helped shape  the Indian scientific scene the way we see  it today. But  for these people, many in our generation would not  have had the luxury  of finding world class  researchers as PhD supervisors without leaving the Indian shores.

I have had the privilege of taking a course offered by him in my first year of graduate studies and later working with him as  a scientific collaborator. I have to say that  the pleasure and the privilege has been entirely mine. Inevitably, over  the years we forged a friendship that  is  characteristically typical  of  academia. It's a valued friendship between a teacher and a former  student,  between  two research  associates bridging  the generation gap which  allows, even obliges one  to be impartial while  judging the work of the other and yet remain close to each other.

During my job hunting days, a  couple of decades ago, Arnab-da had the unenviable  task of  writing  scores of  recommendation  letters -  an almost mandatory  duty for  being a teacher/senior  collaborator.  And suddenly, a few months ago, I find myself with the task of writing a review for one of his books for a science magazine. The onus is now definitely on me to be as fair and as impartial!

I have to  admit upfront that I am totally  impressed by the frankness shown by  Arnab-da in exposing the reality  of front-line  research in this book. Instead of the  standard de-humanised  style of the popular science  genre, this  book  has truly  become  Arnab-da's  'scientific autobiography'. He  has lived through  interesting times and  the book takes us along this roller-coaster ride of frustration and joy that is the hallmark of every scientists' working life.

Of  course,  there  have  been   difference  of  opinions  about  this particular style of writing even  amongst his closest friends.  We all know  that  there exists  a  gulf between  the  style  and  sense of presenting   a   narrative (from  serious   technical   reports   to spy-thrillers) between the  two shores of the  Atlantic.  Most of  us, given our  personal trajectories,  tend to  subscribe to one  style or  the other. I suppose the debate  arises mainly from this perception.  But, after  all  is said  and  done,  people  belonging to  the  scientific community  would immediately  realise  that the  book  has managed  to capture the true essence of the scientific environment around him.

In defense  of his style, Arnab-da  himself says - "I  have found that most scientists are reticent  in making their  life stories  public - perhaps due to the general perception that an average scientist's life is rather  drab and colourless  compared to an average  artist's life. Through my  story, I  have tried  to give  an idea  of how science is actually done in our field. I  have tried to write about a scientist's hopes and  fears, friendships, competitors, jealousies,  and the utter joy of  occasionally discovering  a clue  to understanding  some deep mysteries  of  nature."   In  my humble opinion  his  attempt  is  an unqualified success.

This review has appeared in Resonance - Journal of Science Education. Given the academy (Indian Academy of Sciences, publisher of Resonance) website's not too commendable connection speed, I include it below.

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A Scientific Autobiography 

Going through  "Nature's Third Cycle -  A Story of Sunspots" by Arnab Rai Choudhuri is  akin to having a  ringside  view of the  gradual unveiling of one of the abiding mysteries associated with our friendly neighbourhood star, the Sun.

In  the emergent  era  of gigantic  telescopes,  expected to straddle continents and sometimes  place another foot far beyond mother Earth, Big-data (with a definitive capital B) is inevitably giving rise to humongous collaborative groups in Astronomy & Astrophysics, the sizes of which can sometimes even  shame an  army division. The  old world scientists, working  with  a  handful  of  associates and students, building numerical codes from scratch  on their puny desktop computers are  but a vanishing breed. Arnab  Rai Choudhuri, of the Indian Institute  of Science (IISc,  Bangalore), is one of  those last Mohicans, belonging to a small minority of theoretical astrophysicists (since,  astrophysics by  its  very nature is  an  applied branch  of physics).  He has  even displayed the audacity of devoting his entire scientific career to stellar physics, wondering about the mysteries of our friendly neighbourhood Sun, an  area which  happens to be  at the bottom  of  the pecking order  as  far  as the  current Astrophysics snobbery goes.

Sun, the ultimate arbiter of human civilisation's fate, has fascinated mankind from the beginning of history.   And yet the attraction of Sun in popular  psyche has waned  over the years  to be replaced  by newer frontiers of science like cosmology. The author correctly notes that - 'the unwritten assumption (about solar physics) is that the underlying science is  a kind  of dry  boring science best  left to  the experts, unlike  the science  behind  cosmology or  particle  physics that  can excite general readers.'  So the author wishes to go against this bias by  trying his  hand  at a  popular  account of  the  physics and  the sociological effects of  the solar cycle after  writing two completely pedagogic textbooks  very well received by  practicing astrophysicists and graduate level  students (The physics of fluids  and plasma, 1998, CUP; Astrophysics for Physicists, 2010, CUP).

Our  lives  literally  revolve  around Sun,  a  rather  ordinary  main sequence star, through the  diurnal and the  annual cycles.   Both of these cycles are imposed upon us by the motion of the Earth - the spin around its own  axis, and the rotation in an elliptic path around the Sun. The  other natural cycle  is provided by  the Sun itself, in the form of the eleven year sunspot cycle which is at the heart of all the unusual solar  activities. It is  this third cycle that  Rai Choudhuri  talks about  in  his 'Nature's Third Cycle  :  A story  of sunspots' (2015,  OUP).  He accepts  the challenge of explaining  this behaviour  to  people  not  involved in solar  science  research  and intertwines this account with the tale of his own career.

Interestingly, we  have witnessed a  recent revival of an  interest in the Sun primarily because of two  reasons.  The more dramatic of these is the arrival of space weather upon us.  Solar flares launching bolts of  hot, electrified  gas stir  up magnetic  storms around  the Earth. Earlier the effects  of such space storms were hardly  noticed. But in today's electrically powered, space-based technology dependent society the impact  of the  space storm  induced by  such solar  activities is quite significant.   The other story  is related to long  term climate changes. Accumulation  of large timescale  data on climate  change and its correlation with  solar cycles has finally  brought the connection clear.  As a result, popular  accounts of the solar activity affecting climate  change, its  history and  its  effect on  space weather  have recently made  their appearance  on bookshelves  (for example,  Hoyt & Schatten 1997; Carlowicz & Lopez 2002; Brody 2002 etc.).

In contrast, `Nature's Third Cycle' in unique in its subject matter as it  explains the physics  behind  the  solar  cycle itself.   And  it certainly is not a popular science book intended for lay readers.  The author expects the readers to, at least, have worked through Resnick & Halliday (1966) (the absolute last word in high school physics) and in some  places  the  expectation  is even  higher.   The  real intended readership is the aspiring  physicists at undergraduate level upwards, the physics teachers and, of course, the practising physicists.

Sunspots are dark areas of irregular  shape on the Sun's surface, some as large as 50,000 miles (80,000 km) in diameter,i.e.,  they can even be seen  by naked eye. Their  incidence varies cyclically and  has an average  period  of  eleven  years. They  move  across  the  surface, contracting  and  expanding as  they  go  and actually  correspond  to regions of higher magnetic field that inhibit convection and result in reduced    surface   temperature    compared   to    the   surrounding photo-sphere. This is the reason they appear as dark spots compared to surrounding regions.   Because it is  rather difficult to  observe the Sun directly, records  of sunspots are almost  non-existent before the seventeenth  century but have only  been observed  through telescopes since the time of Galileo.   'Nature's Third Cycle' traces the history of sunspot  science from  the first  discoveries through  the numerous stages of  the puzzle to the  latest results on the  magnetic cycle of activity.

Magnetohydrodynamics (MHD),  governing the  behaviour of  plasma under magnetic field,  is a difficult  subject. The author manages  to bring the  basics of MHD  and dynamo  theory,  underlying the  physics  of sunspots, to a  level accessible to a  large non-technical readership. In the academic community Rai Choudhuri is known as a wonderful teacher and a brilliant scientist. He  uses his expertise as a teacher to take  the readers  effortlessly through  the complexities of solar physics.   One of the interesting  plus points  of this  book is  the section entitled "Notes" in the end. Apart from a list of popular and technical books as suggestion for further reading, the author provides a compilation  of chapter-wise appropriate research articles and his own clarifications  on various  issues. This would be  invaluable for experts and aspiring students alike.

As far as the style goes, it  is an unusual offering from a practicing scientist though  not  entirely  unexpected.  Arnab  Rai Choudhuri is known for his brutally honest opinion about everyone and everything;  sometimes  even  to the discomfiture  of  the  listeners themselves.  It is no wonder then that  he bares his soul in this book and gives the reader a glimpse of the real world of research, contrary to the  sanitary and impersonal fares  that we have typically come to expect.  I myself have seen part  of the story, narrated in this book, unfold in front of  my own eyes while I was a  graduate student in the physics  department of IISc.   And  we  all  know that  such  stories inevitably abound the corridors of every department of every research institution. On  the one hand, there  exist an unwritten code  to keep scientific writing objective  and impersonal.  On the  other hand, the practice of science  is a very human enterprise,  and personal clashes and disagreements are very much a part of this process.

To be sure, the maximal impact  of the book comes from this particular aspect as it makes the  book a compulsive reading. While this may inevitably  attract controversy, in my  view  this also  would be  of immeasurable value to those young readers  who are aspiring to take up research as their future career. Quite aptly, Nigel Weiss terms this book  as  the  'scientific  autobiography' of  Rai  Choudhuri, written  at a  time when the author  was undergoing treatment for  a life-threatening illness.

Also,  Rai  Choudhuri's  personal commentary  on the  struggling phase  of Indian academia is  quite valuable.   After completing  his graduate studies in  Chicago he made the decision to  return to India. At that time research facilities in India were limited and funding was minimal.  Yet, like many of his  peers, he and his students persevered and developed  a theoretical model  of Sun's magnetic cycle  which has been quite successful  in predicting the nature of  the upcoming solar cycle.   Over the  years Indian  research infrastructure  has improved significantly. But it needs to be remembered that the bunch of foreign returnees  like   Rai   Choudhuri  have made   an  invaluable contribution in shaping the Indian scientific  scene the way we see it today.  This historical  element,  touching upon  the  early phase  of Indian scientific research, is another invaluable aspect of this book.

There exist  some other minor points  which many people may  not agree with.  For his doctoral thesis  Rai Choudhuri worked with Eugene Parker, regarded as the most influential solar physicists of our time. He is one  of the originators of the flux  transport dynamo model, the currently favoured theoretical model of  the 11-year sunspot cycle. My personal feeling is that a  somewhat more impersonal depiction of this giant would  have been  more appropriate. Since  there does  exist the possibility of  a reader automatically assuming  a not-quite-objective view of  the author  precisely because of  his close  association with Parker.

I also  have some  reservations about the  author's faith  in citation index. It is, at best, a rather faulty indicator. We are forced to use it for  want of  something better.  But  readers outside  the research community  may not  be aware  of the pinch (or  the sackful,  that is needed in some cases)  of salt that should go with it. Moreover, for the general reader the  author order may not make much  sense. In fact in many branches  of physics the  author order is  strictly alphabetical. The Physical  Review Letters (PRL)  may not  be a very  good indicator either to illustrate the import  of a research article.  Because while PRL is arguably the last word  for areas like condensed matter physics it  certainly does  not  enjoy  the same  status in  the Astronomy  & Astrophysics community.

One  of my  minor  complaints about  this  book is  the  absence of  a photograph of  the physics department  of IISc.  Since the  author has included  a  picture  of  his  PhD institution,  it  would  have  been appropriate  to also  include a  picture of  his workplace  from where significant contribution of India to solar physics has emerged.

Physics Department (old building), IISc, Bangalore

 In summary, this  delightful, most unusual book on  the solar magnetic cycle, explains  the complex  science behind sunspots in  a wonderful manner and  goes far beyond being  a simple popular science  book.  It provides  more than  a glimpse behind  the  professional curtains  of leading scientific  research,  and  would  probably  end  up  greatly influencing many  a young minds  preparing to be the  practitioners of science in not-too-distant a future.

This review has been prepared with valuable inputs from Biman Nath and Niruj Mohan Ramanujan. The reviewer would like to thank both of them.
   

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Of an astrophysics student and a well-loved textbook..

The Durga Puja obsession of Bengalis is aptly summarised by a friend (Sukanya Sinha) in her recent Facebook status - "On Sunday night, as I flipped through TV  channels, every channel had identical images streaming Modi's speech live from  Madison Square! All except one, ABP Ananda, where the screen was split in half -- half of it showed the same image as other channels and half showed the crowd building up in the Durga Pujo pandals on Chaturthi day in Kolkata." 

For us, 'prabasi bangali's (Bengalis living outside Bengal), it also brings the chance to buy cartloads of Bangla books (without the attendant worry of  transporting them from West Bengal) when bookstalls are set up at prominent Puja Pandals. Of course, books have always been an integral part of Durga Puja.   The tradition of  bringing out  'sharadiya' (puja special issue), started by Rabindranath Thakur, is continued with great earnestness by every publisher, big and small, of Bangla books.

In our childhood, before the days of 'information at your fingertips', the 'kagaj-kaku's (paper-delivery uncle) used to be literally mobbed by neighbourhood children for information about the possible arrival dates of these puja specials.  And we wholeheartedly devoted the long puja vaccations (a month long  affair in West Bengal starting from Durga Puja and ending only after Kali Puja/Diwali) to these big, fat volumes. Well, not  entirely. Those days, in West Bengal board schools, the annual examination used to start immediately after this vacation. For us, it meant a thoroughly unfair tug-of-war between the 'sharadiya's and the text books.

Curiously, over the years, the odds slowly changed in favour of the dark horse. A bookbucket challenge has recently been doing its rounds in the social media. For  a while I quietly enjoyed looking at my friends' lists - sometimes rejoicing to find  some of my favourites appearing in then and despairing at most other times to realise how ill-read I really am. Then, like it must have happened to many, I was asked to do the same  by a well-meaning friend. Of course, as many of you know,  I slimed out of the challenge by giving a list of completely technical physics textbooks! 😀

But, to be honest, the response was not a total gimmick. After all, technical books are interwoven into the lives of people who do academics for a living. So this cheeky act on a social media platform got me thinking about these absolute favourites of mine. One of these happens to be "Classical Electrodynamics" by J.  D.  Jackson. An enduring classic, as far as basic physics textbooks go, which has seen many professionals through their entire career, from early undergraduate days to the mighty professorial phase.

The book was as revered as it was feared by most of our undergraduate class. Of  course, the physics department of Presidency College has always had a tradition of being chock-a-block with outrageously brilliant students. Even though by the time we entered its hallowed portals the fraction of such students had gone down substantially, there still were a a couple who stood several heads taller than most   of us. Rumour was that these not-so-ordinary-mortals were swimming through the hugely advanced texts like "The Classical Theory of Fields" by L. D. Landau and E. M. Lifshitz! And there were some diligent souls patiently working their way through the dusty copies of "Classical Electricity and Magnetism" by W.  K. H.   Panofsky and M.  Phillips, rescued from some obscure corner of the college library. But for the ordinary mortals, the choices were limited. Of course, everyone had a copy of Jackson because it was almost the only reputed text that was available in a low priced Indian edition (**see postscript). But Jackson is not an  easy book, definitely not for an ordinary kid straight out of high-school. So except for those few enlightened souls, most of our class was limping through the electromagnetism course (as classical electrodynamics used to be called then) with Jackson being not much of a support.

Few months down the line it was time for the Calcutta Book Fair and 'Introduction to Electrodynamics' by David J. Griffiths arrived on the scene! Unlike most other technical texts, Griffiths made its maiden appearance directly in an Indian edition i.e, with a price-tag that is a fraction of its international version. By next week the entire class had got hold of Griffiths and many never looked back. It goes without saying that Griffiths is no classic but it does allow an ordinary student to navigate the subject on his/her own. One of the cherished memories of my masters days at IIT-Kanpur is of working through Griffiths sitting under an eucalyptus tree in the sprawling lawns of the girls' hostel. I never attended any of the electrodynamics classes in all of the two semesters but it was great fun spending time with Griffiths. One major difference between Griffiths and Jackson is the system of units adopted - while Griffiths used the more popular SI or MKS (meter, kilogram,  second) system, Jackson stuck to the more basic cgs (centimeter, gram, second) system.

After Kanpur I joined a PhD program in Astrophysics. In the very first class we  were told by a professor that he would exclusively use the cgs system, and so would all his colleagues. And the reason he produced for this was peculiar, to say the least. Apparently, the astrophysical quantities are so huge that it makes little difference whether we use cgs or MKS!

Unfortunately this view, jokularly put out by Astrophysicists, did nothing to help us, the beginners. Upon learning that I have joined an Astrophysics program a  friend commented  -  "I understand hereafter you'll place your error bars in the  exponent (power of 10)!". I had every intention of telling him (who was working in the string theory group of a very prestigious institute) - we at least make some measurements to place the error bars on, same can't be said about your discipline. But of  course, thirty years ago, in the absolute heyday of string theory, a mere Astrophysics hopeful could never utter such things. Not even to a friend. Though over the years I have felt that the sheer beauty of trying to extract information about unbelievably distant objects from extremely faint  electromagnetic waves is a terrific privilege to be perturbed by such jibes.

Also herein lies the magic of the cgs system which our professor alluded to. I had the opportunity of knowing this giant of a physicist from close quarters later. He remains, till this day, a very dear friend and mentor (I actually managed to collaborate with him on a rather controversial piece of investigation twenty-five years down the line).   Only after becoming familiar with his passion for the anti-climactic way of delivering the punchline, I realised that the main point was actually stated in a more matter of fact way which most of us missed the first time. Astrophysics  is really mostly about electrodynamics. Because our window to the universe is mainly through the electromagnetic spectrum. And the governing equations of electrodynamics take much simpler forms if the cgs system is used.

So my love for Astrophysics put a definite end to my affair with Griffiths. It was time to bring the old faithful out of wraps. I now had all the legitimate reasons and a bit of maturity (physics-wise) to go back to Jackson. And it has remained a lifelong companion. Like any other classic (whether technical or literary) it has several layers that I still am discovering after all these years. Seeing my obsession with this book a dear friend once gifted me with a hardbound, international edition of Jackson (we were old enough not to worry about the price anymore). By this time I had so much respect for this tome that this gleaming book has since been occupying a prominent place in my office bookshelf while the ancient, dog-eared Indian edition gets me through my everyday life as a struggling astrophysicist.

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Postscript :

Even though in that distant past 1 USD was equal to Rs.11 and a GBP could be had at a mere Rs.17 (Euro was yet to be born), the price of textbooks in their original international editions (most  advanced technical texts were available only in such versions) were not in the comfort zone of students from middle class families. Incidentally, our generation was almost the first  to see the low-priced Indian editions appearing slowly, to the utter delight of a huge population of students. But the prevailing frustration sometimes gave rise to innovative  black humour that used to spread amongst the student community sometimes with a speed  unthinkable in that era when instant communication through cellphone/e-mail/internet was unheard of.

We had just reached the department one morning when a classmate walked in, waving a brand new copy of the Indian edition of a particularly sought after book and declared that the cost was about a third of the international edition. A collective sigh of despair escaped since most of us had bought the international edition not very long ago. One particularly irked student commented - the price came down because it includes a foreward by Prof. so and so (an Indian scientist of some eminence who himself had published a number of texts that failed to catch the imagination of the student community)! The tart comment was not so much about the capability of the said Professor but a statement about the state of financial affairs of the student community of that time.

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In defence of our menfolk : 8 March, 2014

I enrolled in the Physics department of the (then) Presidency College for my undergraduate degree in 1983. There were six of us, girls, in a class of about thirty students. The female/male ratio wasn't any better in the Maths or Statistics departments either. Not surprisingly, men studying literature or biological sciences (where the concentration of women has traditionally been much higher) were eyed with intense envy by their counterparts from departments of mathematical sciences. And there was widespread sympathy for them. Unfortunately nobody thought about us, women who would end up living (professional, as well as personal in most cases) in a world with seriously skewed sex-ratio.

Thirty years ago, this was just the beginning of a journey for me. A good fraction of people choosing academic careers in India typically enter the modern equivalent of a "gurukul" thereafter. Since many of our top universities and research institutes are residential, a person like me often end up spending the rest of his/her working life in academic campuses.

I went to IIT-Kanpur for my M.Sc, after completing B.Sc. from Presidency College. The f/m ratio in our class was not too different from that in the Presidency College. But there was one difference. This time we were actually doing better than the institute average (1 in 10). The reason being the reduced strength of humanities departments (there were no undergraduate students in the few humanities departments that did exist in IITs those days) and a complete absence of biological sciences.

Our PhD class in IISc, Bangalore was not bad. In fact, the fraction of women was 30%. This number is of some real significance. At this year's annual meeting of the  Astronomical Society of India at IISER-Mohali, Dr. Preeti Kharb, a colleague and friend from Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bangalore presented some statistics  from all over the world. It appears that the fraction of women in science at the PhD level (which we can consider as the entry level for a career in academia) is about 30% for most of the advanced countries as well.

So we are not doing too badly at this level. The fact that the fraction progressively dwindles to much lower values as one goes higher up in the career ladder is, of course, a different story altogether (shall discuss this in a separate post). But the essence of all this is that we, women in academia, are a total minority. And are expected to remain so in the foreseeable future.

When the sex-ratio is this dismal at the student level, it is quite natural that most of our teachers have also been male. Consequently, we have had more male friends, collaborators, colleagues, mentors than female. Not surprisingly, most women also tend to pick up spouses from their own fraternity while most of their male counterparts need to look elsewhere.

The upshot of all this, combined with campus living, implies that most women in academia spend their  entire adult life surrounded by twice (or more) as many men than women. And people as lazy as myself (or my husband) also typically combine their vacations with working visits to other institutes and consequently hardly ever go out of the community (barring rare once a year visit to the family home or such like). Meaning, we only see folks from our own academic community (of course, their spouses + children too), which is more than two-thirds male.

So we get more than our fair share of men around us than an average woman in another profession or from a previous era. And my opinion of these men - in roles ranging from classmates, friends, teachers, collaborators, students, spouses (and very recently as fathers too) - is pretty positive.

We need to remember that these men were raised by mothers who were women of a different era. Those women never dreamed of jeans-clad 'badhu-mata's (daughter-in-law) scooting away for days on end leaving the care of the household (+ young children) at the hands of their husbands. Or that the men of the house would have to learn changing diapers from day one, or take up kitchen duties as and when required. Or that they would need to handle the tricky situation of mentoring young, impressionable girl students going through certain emotional rough patches! Basically, the mothers of today's men had no clue about the kind of demands that would be made of their sons, be it at the workplace or at home.

Women have traditionally been expected to learn the ropes and survive through every possible adverse situation. But nobody thought that men too would be in need of survival training to plod through the mundane household chores or to walk the emotional minefields at workplace.

Given this tremendous handicap, I find men doing exceedingly well all around me. The constant complaints about men not contributing as much towards household chores is also a bit of a myth really. In academia, most people spend a few years abroad during their post-doctoral phase. This is when they are most likely to have a young child. Invariably, men get to do the dishes (or other work of similar nature) in every family. Because they never train for household work, they automatically get assigned to the most menial of tasks. Such humility from the section who have always been used to lord over everyone and everything is so refreshing. Difficult to visualise Indian men of a previous generation fitting into such roles.

They also take a serious interest in their children and spend real quality time working on that.  A  friend of mine, despite being a very busy scientist, is actually going through a series of children's books by Roald Dahl because his young daughter is now reading them. And he would like to be in  touch with her interests. When we were young, many fathers were not even aware of the class in which their children were studying till they were close to their first big board exam!

We do find ourselves in a difficult situation. After all, women went through a very rapid and very major transformation both in their perceived and actual roles in recent decades. Whereas the men have neither been completely aware of and have been even less prepared for the required paradigm shift. But we need to remember that while these are the men who have helped us being where we are today, they are also the same people who are facing certain existential challenges without anyone wishing to acknowledge their problems.

So how can we remedy the situation? After all, these are our men - our friends, colleagues, teachers, boyfriends, husbands, brothers.. And it's actually the previous generation of women who have left these men in the lurch. It only befits us, the women of the current generation, to be a little sympathetic while they adjust to their new roles. Bring your men upto scratch, and that would be the best service you can render to the next generation who, hopefully, would not have any need for a thought like this.

Note : The  discussion here pertains only to a certain section of Indian society (mainly middle class folks in and around academia) and does not refer to situations prevailing elsewhere.