An astrophysicist who impressed the youthful technology

On April 23, 2018 the famend astrophysicist Jayant V. Narlikar gave a lecture on ‘Searches for Life Outdoors the Earth’ on the Vikram Sarabhai House Centre’s House Physics Laboratory (SPL) in Thiruvananthapuram.

He spoke about the potential for life present past the earth and the challenges in offering experimental proof for it. On the event, he additionally spoke about certainly one of his experiments utilizing high-altitude balloons that was performed in collaboration with the Indian House Analysis Organisation (ISRO). One of many three sorts of micro organism detected in that experiment had since been named Bacillus isronensis after the area company.

‘A visionary astrophysicist’

In Kerala, Dr. Narlikar, who handed away in Pune on Could 20 aged 86, is remembered as a scientist who impressed numerous children within the examine of science by means of his work, lectures and books. In a put up on X, former ISRO Chairman S. Somanath remembered him as “a visionary astrophysicist and distinguished science communicator who impressed my technology by means of his celebrated works reminiscent of The Lighter Facet of Gravity and Seven Wonders of the Cosmos.”

Dr. Narlikar visited Kerala on a number of events, attending seminars and conferences the place he interacted with college and faculty college students. In 2006, a centre of the Inter-College Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), which he based in 1988, opened on the Cochin College of Science and Know-how (Cusat), Kochi. Initially often known as IUCAA Useful resource Centre, the identify has has since been modified to IUCAA Centre for Astronomy Analysis and Growth (ICARD).

“It was designed as an inter-university extension facility to advertise astronomy analysis. He used to go to the centre, talk about the analysis programmes and collaborations. He visited Cusat in 2016 and 2017. Earlier than that he used to go to a minimum of yearly,” Titus Mathew, a former coordinator of the Cusat centre who’s now Professor Emeritus at Cusat, stated.

In 2019, Dr. Narlikar visited Thiruvananthapuram to simply accept a honorary doctorate in science conferred on him by the College of Kerala.