In news– The Institute of Mathematical Sciences (IMSc), Chennai turned 60 on 3rd January 2022.
About the Institute of Mathematical Sciences (IMSc)–
- IMSc is an autonomous national institute for fundamental research in frontier disciplines of the mathematical and physical sciences: theoretical computer science, mathematics, theoretical physics, and computational biology.
- It was founded on January 3, 1962 in Chennai (in the Adyar-Taramani area) by Alladi Ramakrishnan.
- Nobel Laureate Subrahmanyam Chandrasekhar gave the inaugural lecture that sparked off its journey.
- Research at IMSc is supported by the Department of Atomic Energy of the Government of India and by the Government of Tamil Nadu.
- The Institute is governed by a Board and an Academic Council.
- The present Director of the institute is V. Ravindran.
- As part of the 60th anniversary, two schemes for public outreach to be established this year:
- Setting up of a centre for science communication and mathematics education, for which the DAE has granted support for three years and which is to be located permanently at the IMSc.
- A series of heritage talks to be delivered by eminent scientists and which will focus on the heritage of science in modern day India, with a slant on Tamil Nadu and Chennai in particular.
- Scientists from the institute have been involved in writing and publishing popular science articles for children in magazines named Jantar Mantar (English) and Thulir (Tamil) for over 30 years.
Alladi Ramakrishnan-
- He was an Indian physicist, born on 9 August 1923 in Madras.
- His father was the famous lawyer Sir Alladi Krishnaswami Iyer, who, as a member of the Constituent Assembly, was instrumental in drafting the Constitution of India with other prominent members.
- He made contributions to stochastic processes, particle physics, algebra of matrices, special theory of relativity and quantum mechanics.
- During the 1950s, he worked on the problem of Fluctuating Density Field, and published a series of eight papers on the subject.
- During 1957–1958 Ramakrishnan visited the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton that inspired him to start a similar institution in India.
- He is noted for his work in quantum mechanics on giving a prescription for transition from Pauli to Dirac matrices.
- He also published several papers giving simple but insightful geometric derivations for the Lorentz transformations.
Source: The Hindu
