Renowned astrophysicist Thanu Padmanabhan passes away

Eminent theoretical physicist and cosmologist Thanu Padmanabhan handed away, aged 64, right here on Friday. According to sources, the Padma Shri awardee collapsed after struggling a large coronary heart assault at his Pune residence within the morning. He was rushed to the hospital however died on arrival.

Tributes and condolences poured in from colleagues, lecturers and science lovers throughout the nation.

Okay. VijayRaghavan, Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India, mentioned in a tweet, “Shocked to hear of the passing of Professor Thanu Padmanabhan. His research linking general relativity and thermodynamics in new ways, and in other areas, has been widely recognized. Scholar, communicator, extraordinary scientist, friend to many. He will be much missed”.

From Thiruvananthapuram

Affectionately identified to pals and colleagues as ‘Paddy’, Professor Padmanabhan, born in 1957, was a local of Thiruvananthapuram. He did his commencement and postgraduation from the University College, Kerala University, successful Gold medals in each for topping the varsity.

His brilliance and precocity in theoretical physics was evident proper from the beginning when he printed his first analysis paper in General Relativity on the age of 20 whereas being a B.Sc. scholar.

Following his Masters, Professor Padmanabhan joined the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) for his PhD in 1979 and have become a school there whereas nonetheless working in direction of his doctorate, which he accomplished in 1983.

Moved to Pune in 1992

After a stint on the TIFR, Professor Padmanabhan moved to Pune in 1992 and commenced his lengthy and fruitful affiliation with the city-based Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA) the place he grew to become a Distinguished Professor and served as Dean, Core Academic Programmes, from 1997-2015.

A colossus within the realm of Indian astrophysics, Professor Padmanabhan’s affect on the IUCAA was second solely to the nice Jayant Narlikar, emeritus professor on the IUCAA.

“He [Prof. Padmanabhan] dreamt formulae. He never played to the gallery and did not believe in ‘dumbing down’ while demystifying abstract physics concepts for the layperson… his passing away is a great personal loss,” mentioned eminent scientist, educationist and Padma Shri awardee Arvind Gupta, who ran the favored Science Centre on the IUCAA for a number of years.

Speaking to The Hindu, Mr. Gupta, who’s internationally well-known as a ‘toy inventor’ and for his many books serving to to popularize science in India, recounted the indelible impression that Professor Padmanabhan made by his column within the standard Science Age journal, the place Mr. Gupta used to contribute as effectively.

“Professor Padmanabhan used to write a column in the mid-1980s Science Age titled The Story of Physics – a two-page comic strip serial charting the thrilling history of physics for children and laypeople. The magazine, which regrettably folded up in 1988, was edited by Surendra Jha, who was the father of science journalism in India,” mentioned Mr. Gupta, who contributed to Science Age as effectively along with his column Little Science.

He recalled that on a go to to Pune in 2000, he knocked on Professor Padmanabhan’s door on the IUCAA and expressed the need to translate The Story of Physics columns into Hindi in a e book kind.

“We had great regard for each other. He said how he relished my Little Science columns. I told him I enjoyed His Story of Physics columns and wanted to translate them. They totalled 48 pages… He [Padmanabhan] pulled out a photo copy and gave me the columns which I translated into Hindi. Later, they became so popular that they were translated into several regional languages, including Marathi and Telugu. Professor Padmanabhan’s only request was that he would not take any royalties,” Mr. Gupta mentioned, recalling his former colleague’s deep humility.

Science populariser

A prolific author and science populariser, Professor Padnamabhan authored a number of books which have turn into the usual texts, together with the great three-volume Theoretical Physics (2000), the massively accessible After the First Three Minutes: The Story of our Universe (1998), and a masterful exposition of quantum principle for the layman titled Quantum Themes: The Charms of the Microworld (2009).

Along along with his spouse Vasanthi, Professor Padmanabhan additionally authored the favored Dawn of Science (2019), a energetic 24-chapter historical past of science whose narrative arc stretched from antiquity to the age of Newton that was translated into Chinese, Portuguese and Polish.

Notable amongst his many awards was the Infosys Science Prize, which was given to him in Physical Sciences by the Infosys Science Foundation in 2009. Professor Padmanabhan additionally gained the First Prize within the prestigious Gravity Essay Contest in 2008 (awarded by the Gravity Research Foundation, USA) whereas his work gained totally different prizes on this difficult contest for a lot of years.

Somak Raychaudhury, Director, IUCAA, tweeted, “This is one of the saddest days in the history of the @IUCAApune and the Indian scientific community today. Professor Thanu Padmanabhan passed away this morning as a result of a cardiac arrest”.

In addition to being an adjunct school at a number of IISERs (Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research) throughout the nation, Professor Padmanabhan served in varied capacities at institutes overseas: he was the Sackler Distinguished Astronomer of the Institute of Astronomy (IoA), Cambridge, U.Okay.; Visiting Faculty at Princeton University, California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge; and the Pauli Center/ETH in Zurich.

The much-feted astrophysicist was awarded the Padma Shri in 2007.

He is survived by his spouse and daughter Hamsa Padmanabhan, who’s a Scientific Collaborator and principal investigator of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) Ambizione Grant on the University of Geneva.