The Institute of Mathematical Sciences (IMSc) will pay homage to its visionary founder-director Alladi Ramakrishnan in his birth centenary year by hosting a conference in his honour at its campus in Taramani, Chennai. The eminent physicist was born on August 9, 1923.
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The Alladi Ramakrishnan Centenary Conference, to be held between December 16 and 18, will feature scientific talks by leading researchers from across the world, as well as interactions with industry leaders, institution builders, and science policy makers in the Indian context. To mark the occasion, a bust of Ramakrishnan will also be unveiled at the Institute.
Inspired by the many seminars on modern physics that he had heard during his visit to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton in 1957-58 at the invitation of its director Robert Oppenheimer, Ramakrishnan returned to Madras and subsequently started a theoretical Physics Seminar in his family home, ‘Ekamra Nivas’. This was regularly attended by physicists and mathematicians from across the world as well as his students.
When the Physics Nobel Laureate Niels Bohr toured India in 1960 as the guest of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, he said that two things had impressed him the most: the massive set-up of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research directed by Homi Bhabha in Bombay, and the small band of students trained by Alladi Ramakrishnan in Madras.
Nehru went on to meet Ramakrishnan, and with his support, the Institute of Mathematical Sciences was founded and inaugurated in 1962. Ramakrishnan served as its director till his retirement in 1983 at the age of 60. In the six decades since its founding, the IMSc has grown into a leading research institution.