Abstracts

IUCAA: genesis of a unique research centre by Saibal Ray

The Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA) is the second Inter-University Centre established by the Government of India for promotion of astronomy and astrophysical research. In the talk, the historical development, as well as the motivation, for establishing IUCAA will be discussed which comprises of the period 1988–1993, i.e. the first 5 years. A glimpse of research work in pre- and post-colonial era in India will also be presented to have a holistic view of the genesis.

Bibha Chowdhuri and women in Indian Physics by Samiha Sehgal

Bibha Chowdhuri and women in Indian Physics: Indian women physicists have made pioneering contributions to the fields of cosmic ray physics, particle physics, and high-energy physics. This talk will celebrate the milestones and achievements of Bibha Chowdhuri and her work in the discovery of the muon, Rohini Godbole’s work on the Standard Model and Higgs Boson, and others. Their achievements reflect a growing presence in international scientific advancements.

The Early Career of Abdus Salam by Muhammad Hamza Waseem

Abdus Salam was a Pakistani theoretical physicist who (along with Steven Weinberg and Sheldon Glashow) won the 1979 Nobel Prize for work on electroweak unification. The first Pakistani and the first Muslim to win a Nobel Prize, Salam acquired his early education in British India before getting a scholarship to Cambridge after World War II (WWII). This talk will shed light on Salam’s undergraduate education at Government College, Lahore. There will be a particular focus on his flirtation with English literature, his first research paper which was on a problem by Ramanujan, and his co-curricular activities, particularly his involvement with the college magazine `the Ravi’. A glimpse of his magazine writings –- on topics as diverse as hair-dressing, science and culture, and the post-WWII world — will be presented.

Boson Bloom - SN Bose and Bose-Einstein statistics by Ganapathy Baskaran

A short article from SN Bose from Dacca, on derivation of Planck Distribution, devoid of earlier logical inconsistencies, communicated to Albert Einstein in 1924, marks a turning point in the history of quantum mechanics. Boses' notion of indistinguishability of massless quantum particles, photons, in the hands of Einstein, resulted in Bose-Einstein condensation for massive particles. Works, that followed, of de Broglie, Schrodinger, Pauli and others culminated, in the hands of Dirac, as two families of quantum particles, namely Bosons and Fermions. Bose played Esraj and Einstein Violin. Blooming [1] Bosons and Bose-Einstein phenomena continue to provide music to our ears.

[1] G. Baskaran and Alex May, Boson Bloom, J.Phys.B: At.Mol.Opt.Phys. 57 (2024) 142001