Jayant Narlikar: The Indian astrophysicist and sci-fi author who challenged ‘Huge Bang’

Famend astrophysicist Jayant Vishnu Narlikar
| Picture Credit score: Thulasi Kakkat

Dr. Jayant Narlikar, certainly one of India’s most distinguished astrophysicists who mixed profound theoretical perception into cosmology with a lifelong dedication to science communication, handed away at his residence in Pune on Tuesday (Might 20. 2025). He was 86.

Describing what made Dr. Narlikar one of many “greats”, Dr. Tarun Souradeep, Director of the Raman Analysis Institute (RRI), Bengaluru, advised The Hindu that it was his “sense of justice and equality,” and his “unwavering dedication” to popularising science and combating “non-science-based superstition and astrology,” that set him aside.

As a gifted institution-builder, Dr. Narlikar performed a pioneering position in establishing the Inter-College Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), Pune, the place he served as Founder-Director. Below his stewardship, IUCAA emerged as a globally recognised centre for theoretical physics, cosmology, and astrophysics.

“He spawned plenty of main scientists who set new instructions and colleges: Thanu Padmanabhan (Cosmology, Gravitation and Quantum Gravity); Sanjeev Dhurandhar (Gravitational Waves); Ajit Kembhavi (Information-driven observational astronomy), to call just a few,” Dr. Souradeep, who accomplished his doctoral analysis below Dr. Narlikar’s steerage, stated.

A prolific author and science populariser, Dr. Narlikar as soon as recalled in a weblog submit “enjoying desk tennis with Stephen Hawking (previous to his muscular atrophy)” after they had been each college students on the College of Cambridge.

The then President Pranab Mukherjee presents the Lakshmipat Singhania-IIM, Lucknow Nationwide Management Award to Jayant Visnu Narlikar. File picture
| Picture Credit score:
Shanker Chakravarty

Dr. Narlikar first gained worldwide recognition when, alongside the British astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle, he proposed the ‘regular state’ mannequin of the universe – a concept positing a timeless cosmos during which matter is constantly created. This stood in distinction to the dominant ‘Huge Bang’ mannequin, a time period satirically coined by Hoyle to disparage it, which posits that the universe started at a single time limit.

Though subsequent observational proof has since firmly supported the Huge Bang concept, Dr. Narlikar remained a persistent and vocal critic of it, adapting and refining the regular state view all through his profession.

“He wore his exceptional studying in numerous disciplines very flippantly and he mixed to an uncommon diploma formidable scholarship with humility. He was properly and actually a most luminous star of Indian science, who mirrored the noblest of our civilisational traditions,” Congress communications in-charge and Rajya Sabha MP Jairam Ramesh tweeted. He additionally shared an excerpt from the 1964 version of Yojana – a Planning Fee publication – which debated whether or not India ought to lure the younger Narlikar again from Cambridge.

In a uncommon feat, Dr. Narlikar was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 1965, even earlier than formally starting his profession in India on the Tata Institute of Basic Analysis (TIFR), Mumbai. He later acquired the Padma Vibhushan in 2004.

Amongst his many accolades had been the UNESCO Kalinga Prize for the popularisation of science in 1996 and the distinguished Prix Jules Janssen from the French Astronomical Society in 2004.

Dr. Narlikar was additionally extensively admired for his literary contributions. His science-fiction story Dhoomaketu (The Comet) was tailored into a movie, whereas his autobiography Chaar Nagarantale Maze Vishwa (My Story of 4 Cities) was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Prize. His writing – marked by readability, an avoidance of jargon, and philosophical depth – explored themes starting from alien encounters to the ethical quandaries arising from speedy technological progress.

The Vice-Chancellor of Benaras Hindu College, prof. Hari Gautam (left) presenting an hononory diploma of Physician of sciences to Prof. Jayant Vishnu Narlikar, on the seventh conference of the BHU science school in Varanasi.
| Picture Credit score:
The Hindu Archives

He was steadily featured in science programmes on tv within the Nineteen Nineties and credited Carl Sagan’s outreach work, in addition to the fiction of Sir Hoyle, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, and Ray Bradbury, as key influences in his strategy to speaking science.

Born to eminent dad and mom – Vishnu Vasudev Narlikar, a mathematician at Benares Hindu College (now IIT-BHU), and Sumati Narlikar, a Sanskrit scholar – Dr. Narlikar acquired his early schooling in Varanasi earlier than transferring to the College of Cambridge, the place he accomplished his Ph.D. below Sir Hoyle’s mentorship.