- on January 3, 1962

The story of the birth of MATSCIENCE, The Institute of Mathematical Sciences, is an exciting saga in the world of science. This series by Krishnaswami Alladi describes the efforts of his father, Professor Alladi Ramakrishnan, and the role of his Theoretical Physics Seminar in the creation of this Institute in Madras on January 3, 1962. As a background, certain important events in the scientific career of Ramakrishnan, starting from 1947, are described since they served as a motivating force for this famous seminar.

The story of the creation of MATSCIENCE, The Institute of Mathematical Sciences, is an exciting saga not just in Indian science, but in the world of science. The Insitute was a direct consequence of the efforts of Professor Alladi Ramakrishnan, who conducted a Theoretical Physics Seminar in his home Ekamra Nivas in Madras during 1959-61. Several eminent scientists and mathematicians spoke at the seminar. They included Niels Bohr, Abdus Salam, Donald Glaser, Marshall Stone, and Laurent Schwartz.

Nobel Laureate Niels Bohr, who was visiting India as the guest of Prime Minister Nehru in 1960, was so impressed that he expressed his admiration for the seminar at a press conference. This attracted the attention of the Prime Minister who, at the urging of the Madras Minister of Education, C. Subramaniam, agreed to meet Prof. Ramakrishnan and his students on December 8, 1961 at the Raj Bhavan in Madras. At that meeting, when the Prime Minister asked Prof. Ramakrishnan what he wanted, he said that he desired an institute modelled along the lines of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Subramaniam was able to persuade Prime Minister Nehru to agree to the creation in Madras of a new institute for advanced research in the mathematical sciences. Thus, within a matter of weeks, MATSCIENCE was inaugurated on January 3, 1962 with Prof. Ramakrishnan as the Director, a position he held for 21 years until his retirement in 1983. Today, the Institute has established itself as one of the major research centres not just in India but in the world.

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My grandfather, Sir Alladi Krishnaswami Iyer, was one of the greatest lawyers of India. He was a member of the Drafting Committee of the Indian Constitution. His eminence influenced many family members to take to law. In particular, after my father obtained a BSc honours degree in Physics, he attended Law College and secured a Gold Medal in Hindu Law. While Father was a student at Presidency College in the BSc honours course, he heard a lecture by Homi Bhabha in 1943 on Meson Theory. That lecture inspired him. My grandmother, Lady Venkalakshmi, convinced Grandfather to allow my father to pursue a career of his choice.

In 1947, Ramakrishnan met Homi Bhabha at a dinner in Delhi. He told Bhabha how that lecture in 1943 inspired him. Bhabha then suggested that he join him in Bangalore to work with him.

Homi Bhabha, after he had returned to India from England in 1943, had set up a modest Cosmic Ray Unit at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore. Soon after, Bhabha moved to Bombay where, with the initial support of the Tata family, he started the Tata Insitute of Fundamental Research. Ramakrishnan moved to Bombay to work with Bhabha as one of the first members of the Tata Institute. When Bhabha approached a problem from a particular angle, Father approachd the problem very differently and provided a simpler solution. Bhabha preferred to pursue his approach, and so Ramakrishnan decided to leave the Tata Institute to seek recognition of his work elsewhere. He returned to Madras and decided to go to England to complete his PhD.

He was welcomed by the University of Manchester in 1949 where he was to spend two years and get his doctorate. While there, his professor, M.S. Bartlett, communicated his initial paper on product densities to the Proceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical Society. Bhabha’s paper appeared in the same month in the Proceedings of the Royal Society. Thus it was a positive ending for Ramakrishnan with regard to the timely publication of his important work in a major journal.

Even though Father left the Tata Institute due to lack of recognition of his work, he never expressed anger against Bhabha by criticising him in public or in writing. On the contrary, he admired Bhabha for his brilliance and charisma and, even after leaving the Tata Institute, he maintained good relations with his teacher.

While doing his PhD in Manchester, Ramakrishnan attended several conferences and visited other universities in the United Kingdom. Of note was the Conference on Modern Physics in Edinburgh, Scotland, in the winter of 1949, where he met Nobel Laureates Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, and Max Born. This resulted in an invitation to visit the Bohr Institute in Copenhagen and Universities in Sweden and Norway. Many of the contacts made during his stay in Europe were crucial in his career, and some of these scientists were to visit him in Madras in later years and lecture at his Theoretical Physics Seminar.

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On the way back to India in 1951. Mother spent a few weeks in Switzerland. In Geneva, Ramakrishnan met Sir A. L. Mudaliar, the Vice-Chancellor of Madras University. Sir Lakshmanaswami told him that the University was starting a Department of Physics and that he could apply for a position there. He was offered a Readership (= Associate Professor) in Physics in 1952. The position of Professor of Physics was occupied by G. N. Ramachandran, who was leading a programme on crystallography in the Department. On joining the University, Ramakrishnan began a series of lectures on Methods of Mathematical Physics. Two MSc students who attended his lectures, P. M. Mathews and S. K. Srinivasan, later became the first two of his PhD students.

For nearly a decade after his return from England, Ramakrishnan, by himself and with his students, continued to work at the University of Madras on extensions of the theory of product densities and its applications to cascade theory in Physics, fluctuation problems in astrophysics, and to biosciences. During 1952-57, he published seven papers in the Astrophysical Journal (by himself and with his students Mathews, Srinivasan and Vasudevan), all communicated to that great astrophysicist Chandrasekhar (University of Chicago), who was the Editor. S.K. Srinivasan subsequently joined the Mathematics Department at IIT Madras after his PhD and rose to be its Head.

Over the next few years, many more students in the MSc Physics course at the University of Madras approached Ramakrishnan to do their PhD under his guidance.

In 1953, Ramakrishnan received an invitation to spend a few months as a visiting scientist at the University of Sydney in the rapidly growing Physics Department there. In Sydney, he gave a series of lectures, the notes of which became the basis of his famous article on this topic in the Handbush der Physik a few years later.

While in Australia, he spent some time with the famous physicist Sir Mark Oliphant, a former associate of Lord Rutherford. When Oliphant said that he was planning to visit India under the auspices of the Royal Society, Ramakrishnan invited him to deliver the Rutherford Memorial Lecture at the University of Madras.

(To be continued)