The Indian Space Programme

by Gurbir Singh

  [140]. Nehru, Jawaharlal. 1994. The Discovery of India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. P512. You can also find it here: http://varunkamboj.typepad.com/files/the-discovery-of-india-1.pdf The original copy was published in 1946 and written during Nehru’s time in prison. He dedicated this book to “To my colleagues and co-prisoners in the Ahmednagar Fort Prison Camp from 9 August 1942 to 28 March 1945”.

  [141]. Rajwi, Tiki. 27 November 2015. To Defend Itself, the Nation has to Become Self-reliant: U.R. Rao. Indian Express. Retrieved from http://www.newindianexpress.com/cities/thiruvananthapuram/To-Defend-Itself-the-Nation-has-to-Become-Self-reliant-U-R-Rao/2015/11/27/article3148482.ece

  [142]. Shah, Amrita. 2007. Vikram Sarabhai: A Life. Illustrated edition. India: Viking (India). P63.

  [143]. At 99th position, it only just made it. PTI. 12 November 2015. IISc debuts in top 100 world university ranking. BusinessLine. Retrieved from http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/news/education/iisc-debuts-in-top-100-world-university-ranking/article7869064.ece.

  [144]. Dilks, David. 1969. Curzon in India: Achievement, Vol. 1. London: Rupert Hart-Davis. P244.

  [145]. A letter dated 3 March 1904 from I.G.R Landes, Barrister-at-Law, who valued the 18 properties at Rs. 125,000. IISc Archives.

  [146]. Ironically, the locals know it better as the Tata Institute rather than the IISc.

  [147]. A letter from D. J. Tata to the Viceroy dated 14 July 1904. IISc Archives.

  [148]. Unknown author. 10 October 1992. In This Issue: Morris Travers (1872-1961). Current Science 63 (7). http://www.currentscience.ac.in/Downloads/article_id_063_07_0341_0342_0.pdf. This issue has a graphic showing his Hydrogen liquefier.

  [149]. A letter dated 29 May 1905 from William Ramsay to D. J. Tata providing an update securing a director for the Institute. IISc Archives.

  [150]. Balaram, P. 2008. Morris Travers: Remembering an Institution Builder. Current Science 94(9).

  [151]. Interview with the author on 5 February 2015. Narasimha goes on to share fascinating memories of meeting Satish Dhawan, who was then an associate professor at IISc in 1953. Later, Narasimha moved to Caltech in 1957, from where he recalls seeing Sputnik. He completed his PhD in flow dynamics and returned to India in 1961. He was invited to Thumba to witness the launch of India’s first rocket—Nike-Apache. He served as a member of the Space Commission, the government body that approves all ISRO missions, and remembers ISRO’s 2008 mission to the Moon, which called for an intense debate prior to approval.

  [152]. Lee, Rachel. September 2012. Constructing a Shared Vision: Otto Koenigsberger and Tata & Sons. ABE Journal: Architecture Beyond, https://abe.revues.org/356?lang=en.

  [153]. In a 54 about Satish Dhawan in A Voyage Through Turbulence, Roddam Narasimha (Dhawan's student) writes “A postage stamp released in 2009 on the occasion of the centenary of the Institute contains pictures of its several icons: the founder (Jamsetji Tata, Parsi businessman and industrialist from Bombay), his spiritual ally (Swami Vivekananda), his princely supporter (the Maharaja of Mysore), the Institute’s first director (British chemist Morris Travers), its greatest scientist (C.V. Raman), its greatest alumnus (the biophysicist G.N. Ramachandran) and (presumably) its greatest director (Satish Dhawan)”. Davidson, Peter A., Yukio Kaneda, Keith Moffatt and Katepalli R. Sreenivasan (Eds) 2011. A Voyage Through Turbulence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. P374.

  [154]. For a balanced critique, see https://desidreaming.wordpress.com/2007/04/30/the-dirty-little-secret-of-the-tatas/. Many other sources also make a similar point but with reduced objectivity.

  [155]. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. October 1955. P282

  [156]. Bhabha’s thesis was titled The Theory of Elementary Physical Particles and Their Interactions. James Clerk Maxwell, Stephen Hawking and Abdus Salam are some of the other recipients of Adams Prize. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adams_Prize

  [157]. Wadia, S. 2009, Homi Jehangir Bhabha and the Tat Institute for Fundamental Research. Current Science 96 (5): 725–733, 1311.

  [158]. Letter to Sir Sorabji Saklatvala, Chairman, Sir Dorabji Tata Trust. 12 March 1944.

  [159]. Anderson, Robert S. 2010. Nucleus and Nation: Scientists, International Networks, and Power in India. Chicago, London: University of Chicago Press. P190.

  [160]. Ending Extreme Poverty and Sharing Prosperity: Progress and Policies, a 2015 report from the World Bank noted that a connective infrastructure “is a crucial means of linking the farms and firms where the poor live and work to markets. Electrification of poor areas in South Africa has resulted in a 9 percentage point increase in female labour force participation, consumption, and earnings by allowing reallocation of time use within the household thanks to time-saving appliances’. Policy Research Note, Ending Extreme Poverty and Sharing Prosperity: Progress and Policies. P60. Retrieved from http://pubdocs.worldbank.org/pubdocs/publicdoc/2015/10/109701443800596288/PRN03-Oct2015-TwinGoals.pdf

  [161]. Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. 2009. Homi Jehangir Bhabha on Indian Science and the Atomic Energy Programme: A Selection. P143 in section XV11. It is a transcript of an interview titled ‘India’s developments strategy’ with International Science and Technology, October 1963. Ironically, in 2015, India is witnessing a rapid increase in the construction of coal-fired power stations. In August 2011, 554 new power stations were approved with a capacity for 590,000 megawatts of power. Between them they will generate 3.7 billion tons (907.19 billion kg) of carbon dioxide.

  [162]. Rao, P. V. S. 2008. TIFRAC, India’s First Computer — A Retrospective. Resonance. 13 (5): 420–29.

  [163]. Ibid.

  [164]. ISRO’s demand for high-performance computing power for calculating numerous complex models and simulations (that is, orbital dynamics, airflows for launch vehicles and nozzle heat dissipation) is high. In 2011, it announced the completion of India’s fastest supercomputer. The new Graphic Processing Unit (GPU)-based supercomputer was named SAGA-220 (Supercomputer for Aerospace with GPU Architecture-220 TeraFLOPS). Retrieved from http://www.isro.gov.in/sites/default/files/flipping_book/64-SI-Apr-Dec2011/files/assets/common/downloads/publication.pdf

  [165]. This event did not attract the level of publicity it should have given the magnitude of the achievement. See http://www.paragonsdc.com/stratex/. Another intriguing discovery was made in 2009 by an ISRO-sponsored high-altitude balloon experiment also launched from Hyderabad. It discovered three previously unknown species of bacteria, which are now named as Janibacter hoylei, after the British astrophysicist Fred Hoyle, Bacillus isronensis after ISRO and Bacillus Aryabhata after India's ancient astronomer Aryabhata and ISRO's first satellite. See http://www.isro.gov.in/update/16-mar-2009/discovery-of-new-microorganisms-stratosphere

  [166]. Nehru deals with the idea of tradition in the chapter titled ‘The Burden of Old Tradition’. He acknowledges the deep roots of Indian tradition and the importance of maintaining some of them but posits the case for discarding others. At one point, he states that tradition “has much of good in it, but sometimes it becomes a terrible burden, which makes it difficult for us to move forward”. Nehru, Jawaharlal. 2004. Glimpses of World History. New edition. New Delhi: Penguin Books India.

  [167]. Jawaharlal, Nehru. 1994. The Discovery of India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. P31.

  [168]. Retrieved from http://www.constitution.org/cons/india/p4a51a.html

  [169]. Kochhar, Rajesh. 2014. Rise and Decline of Modern Science in India. http://www.slideshare.net/rajeshkochhar1/oration-rise-and-decline. Slide 48.

  [170]. As a snapshot of Indian leaders heading multinational companies): Sundar Pichai, CEO, Google; Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft; Sanjay Kumar Jha, CEO, Global Foundries; Shantanu Narayen, CEO, Adobe; Francisco D'Souza, CEO, Cognizant; Sanjay Mehrotra, CEO, SanDisk Corporation; Rajeev Suri, President and CEO, Nokia; George Kurian, CEO, NetApp; Vanitha Narayanan, MD, IBM India; Neelam Dhawan, MD, HP India; Aruna Jayanthi, CEO, Capgemini India; Kirthiga Reddy, Head of Office, Facebook India; Kuma Srinivasan, President, Int
el India; Sabeer Bhatia, co-founder of Hotmail; Padmasree Warrior, Chief Technology Officer, Cisco.

  [171]. Tharoor, Shashi. 2012. Pax Indica: India and the World of the Twenty-First Century. New Delhi: Penguin Global.

  [172]Chapter 4

  . Three examples have been used in this book to illustrate the discriminatory environment during the colonial period: (i) English professors’ resentment of “working under an Indian director” Parameswaran, Uma. 2011. C.V. Raman: A Biography. New Delhi: Penguin Books India. P174; (ii) Lord Curzon’s likening higher education for Indians to “presenting a naked man with a top-hat when what he wants is a pair of trousers” Dilks, David. 1969. Curzon in India: Achievement, Vol. 1. London: Rupert Hart-Davis, P244 and (iii) J.C. Bose being paid a salary “half of what the British teachers were paid” INSA. 2001. Pursuit and Promotion of Science: The Indian Experience. Indian National Science Academy. P23. Divisions and discrimination persist even today, in independent India. However, now the source is not a foreign occupying power but age-old divisions based on deep-set caste hierarchy.

  [173].Oxford historian Dr. Alan Chapman in his 1998 book, The Victorian Amateur Astronomer, calls them ‘Grand Amateurs’, rich and powerful individuals who built, or commissioned, and then used large telescopes to undertake independent astronomical research. They were merchants or engineers who became wealthy during the Industrial Revolution or married into rich families. William Lassell from Manchester discovered the largest Moon of Neptune in 1846 a few weeks after Neptune’s discovery. Engineer James Naismith, originally from Scotland, built machines and tools to build large telescopes. He was one of the first to privately own a 20-inch (50.8 cm) diameter mirror telescopes in 1840. Although there were rich Indians (especially the Princes and Rajas) some of who financially supported institutions such as IISc and IACS, none of them apparently had the aptitude or the inclination to invest and conduct science personally.

  [174]. Birchenough, Tom. 14 October 2014. Cosmonauts: How Russia Won the Space Race. Theartsdesk.com. Retrieved from http://www.theartsdesk.com/tv/cosmonauts-how-russia-won-space-race-spaceman-afghanistan-bbc-four

  [175]. Chatterjee, Santimay and Enakshi Chatterjee. 1976. Satyendra Nath Bose. New Delhi: National Book Trust, India.

  [176]. In one instance, the police had to step in to control the crowds in Manchester. “The aid of the police was required to make way for him to the manufactories and when he had entered, it was necessary to close and bolt the gate to keep out the mob.” Collet, Sophia Dobson. 1914. The Life and Letters of Raja Rammohun Roy. Edited by Hem Chandra Sarakar. 2nd Edition. Calcutta: A. C. Sarkar.

  [177]. As a result of the reform bill, the number of voters increased from 500,000 to 800,000. This was still only a small percentage of the British population of 14 million at the time. The passing of the bill in the third attempt was considered a victory against corruption and for liberal values. Roy had publicly declared “in the event of the Reform Bill being defeated I would renounce my connection with this country”. This reflects Roy’s position on the bill and spoke clearly of his liberal political values.

  [178]. Collet, Sophia Dobson. 1914. The Life and Letters of Raja Rammohun Roy. Edited by Hem Chandra Sarakar. 2nd Edition. Calcutta: A. C. Sarkar.

  [179]. Wali, Kameshwar C. 1992. Chandra: A Biography of S. Chandrasekhar. New edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. P258.

  [180]. INSA. 2001. Pursuit and Promotion of Science: The Indian Experience. New Delhi: Indian National Science Academy. P23.

  [181]. Mahanti, Subodh. 2002. Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose. A Pioneer of Modern Indian Science. Retrieved from http://www.alternativaverde.itwww.alternativaverde.it/sttlcing/documenti/Bose/bose.pdf

  [182]. Singh, Rajinder. 2004. Nobel Laureate C.V. Raman’s Work on Light Scattering: Historical Contributions to a Scientific Biography. Berlin: Logos Verlag. P9.

  [183]. Belrose, John. 1995. Fessenden and Marconi: Their Differing Technologies and Transatlantic Experiments during the First Decade of This Century. Proceedings of the 1995 International Conference on 100 Years of Radio.

  [184]. The following article asserts that the key element, the mercury autocoherer, used by Marconi was invented by Jagadish Chandra Bose. Aggarwal, Varun. 2006. Jagadish Chandra Bose: The Real Inventor of Marconi’s Wireless Detector. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. P1. Retrieved from http://web.mit.edu/varun_ag/www/bose_2006.pdf

  [185]. Bondyopadhyay, Probir K. 1998. Under the Glare of a Thousand Suns – The Pioneering Works of Sir J. C. Bose. Proceedings of the IEEE 86 (1): 218–85.

  [186]. The paper is available online. In it, Bose describes in detail the use of different metals (sodium, potassium, iron aluminium, copper, silver, gold and others) as coherers. See http://web.mit.edu/varun_ag/www/bose_original.pdf

  [187]. J.C. Bose. 17 May 1901. Personal Letter to Rabindranath Tagore. Archives of Rabindra Bhavan, Santiniketan. The patent that Bose talks about in his letter to Tagore is the patent he chose not to file but Marconi did two days before his landmark transatlantic experiment (G. Marconi, British Patent 18 105, applied for Sept. 10, 1901). Interestingly, Bose did succumb and file a patent for the Detector for Electrical Disturbances under his own name on 29 March 1904, but let it lapse. Retrieved from http://web.mit.edu/varun_ag/www/jcbosepatent.pdf

  [188]. A copy of the original patent no. 755 840 dated 29 March 1904 is available here: http://web.mit.edu/varun_ag/www/jcbosepatent.pdf

  [189]. Gardiol, Fred E. 2011. About the Beginnings of Wireless. International Journal of Microwave and Wireless Technologies 3 (04). doi:10.1017/S1759078711000444.

  [190]. The reference below indicates that the time of day and the physical characteristics of the (predominately) antenna appear to indicate that the famous broadcast is more likely to have used shortwave rather than long wavelengths. Bondyopadhyay, P. K. 2001. Marconi’s 1901 Transatlantic Wireless Communication Experiment. 31st European Microwave Conference, London.

  [191]. Banerjee, Biswanath. 2010. The Scientist and the Poet: Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose and Rabindranath Tagore. Rupkatha Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities 2 (4). Retrieved from http://rupkatha.com/V2/n4/08JCBoseandTagore.pdf

  [192]. At that time, smallpox and cholera epidemics claimed the lives of almost half of the children before they reached their first birthday. Kanigel, Robert. 1992. The Man Who Knew Infinity: Life of the Genius Ramanujan. New edition. London: Abacus. P12.

  [193]. Rao, Srinivasan. 2000. Life and Work of the Mathemagician Srinivasa Ramanujan. Chennai: The Institute of Mathematical Sciences. P5. Retrieved from http://arxiv.org/pdf/math/0003184.pdf

  [194]. The Hindu. 25 December 2011. Ramanujan Lost and Found: a 1905 letter from Hindu. Retrieved from http://www.thehindu.com/features/friday-review/history-and-culture/ramanujan-lost-and-found-a-1905-letter-from-the-hindu/article2745164.ece.

  [195]. Rao, Srinivasan. 2000. Life and Work of the Mathemagician Srinivasa Ramanujan. Chennai: The Institute of Mathematical Sciences. P8 and P10. Retrieved from http://arxiv.org/pdf/math/0003184.pdf.

  [196]. Kanigel, Robert. 1992. The Man Who Knew Infinity: Life of the Genius Ramanujan. New edition. London: Abacus. P175.

  [197]. Berndt, Bruce C. and Robert Alexander Rankin. 2001. Ramanujan: Essays and Surveys. American Mathematical Society. P108.

  [198]. Kanigel, Robert. 1992. The Man Who Knew Infinity: Life of the Genius Ramanujan. New edition. London: Abacus. P177.

  [199]. In the letter, Walker acknowledged that Ramanujan had already been in contact with G.H. Hardy in Cambridge and encouraged Madras University to support him. G. Walker, Gilbert. 26 February 1913. Comparable to a mathematics fellow of Cambridge. Letter to the registrar of the University of Madras.

  [200]. Ramanujan, S. 16 January 1913. Letter to G.H. Hardy. Cited in Rao, Srinivasan. 2000. Life and Work of the Mathemagician Srinivasa Ramanujan. Chennai: The Institute of Mathematical Sciences. P10. Retrieved from http://arxiv.org/pdf/math/0003184.pdf. A transcript of this letter is available in many sources. />
  [201]. Aiyangar, Srinivasa Ramanujan. 1995. Ramanujan: Letters and Commentary. American Mathematical Society. P118.

  [202]. Rao, Srinivasan. 2000. Life and Work of the Mathemagician Srinivasa Ramanujan. Chennai: The Institute of Mathematical Sciences. P18. Retrieved from http://arxiv.org/pdf/math/0003184.pdf

  [203]. Darling, David. 2004. The Universal Book of Mathematics: From Abracadabra to Zeno’s Paradoxes. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons. P266.

  [204]. Aiyangar, Srinivasa Ramanujan. 1995. Ramanujan: Letters and Commentary. American Mathematical Society. P3.

  [205]. Wali, Kameshwar C. 1992. Chandra: A Biography of S. Chandrasekhar. New edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. P262.

  [206]. Kanigel, Robert. 1992. The Man Who Knew Infinity: Life of the Genius Ramanujan. New edition. London: Abacus. P317.

  [207]. Ramaseshan, S. 1990. Srinivasa Ramanujan. Current Science 59 (24): 1309–16, 1311.

  [208]. A fascinating story of this discovery is recounted by Professor Andrews in the transcript of a video recorded in 2002. Retrieved from http://www.imsc.res.in/~rao/ramanujan/interviewindex.htm Andrews, George. 2002. Discovery of Ramanujan’s Lost Notebook.