IUCAA - Khagol # 111 - July 2017

| KHAG L | | No. 111 - JULY 2017 02 Yash got constructive projects well supported, not by order but by persuasion. A senior colleague at the UGC once said: The bright ideas come from the 'above' Yash Pal: Scientist and a Great Leader Yash Pal, who passed away on July 24, 2017, was a multi-dimensional personality, and had a genius to fit in many roles quite effortlessly and successfully. Starting as his Ph.D. student, I had an association with him formore than five decades. Here, I shall try to give glimpses of his person as I experienced. Soon after joining TIFR in 1963, I saw Yash (as he was called by his friends) from a distance and his persona, with pipe in his hand or mouth, created in me a sense of awe about him. Some weeks after joining TIFR, I met him, and started working as his Ph.D. student. In the very first meeting with him, I was put at ease by his gentle, but penetrating style of conversation. Soon I started working, along with his other students, on problems relating to composition, transport, and interactions of cosmic rays. He always encouraged innovative fresh thinking in research, and was more keen on exploring implications of new ideas as compared to working out the details. Let memention an example of such fresh thinking: The cosmic rays travel long and varying-paths between their sources before reaching the earth, and in the process suffer many changes. The prevailing model for estimating these changes was to approximate the varying-paths by an average path. This approximation led to some trouble of inconsistencies in understanding lower energy cosmic rays. An explicit consideration of the varying-paths by our group eliminated the inconsistencies. After a long and successful career in research at TIFR, in 1972 he took position of the Founder Director of the Space Applications Centre (SAC) of ISRO at Ahmedabad. This change was the beginning of many roles he played on the national level for development of science and technology, and remodelling of education. The first major project at this centre, called SITE, was for enabling mass education through the use of space technology. The successful completion of this project in a short three-year period required his genius for practising and encouraging innovation, inter-disciplinary vision, and management. At the SAC, the tradition of innovation and excellence was firmly implanted by him, and this centre continues to serve the country by developing state-of-the-art systems for communications and remote sensing. (meaning Yash), …it is our responsibility to implement them. Yash Pal was a household name because of his interaction with school students, …his replies on TV to questions from them were eagerly awaited. He was a firm believer of science communication, and regretted greatly the rise of pseudo science in public mind. For example, he was very unhappy when, a few years after his retirement, the UGC introduced astrology as a scientific discipline in universities. But he was highly pleased to see science popularization included in IUCAA's extra- curricular programmes. He readily agreed with IUCAA's view that interest in science and inculcation of the scientific temper at the school level should pay dividend at later stage. Indeed, now and then one meets bright minds in science and technology, who recall being motivated by IUCAA's school students' programmes. IUCAA has been fortunate in attracting young scientists of high calibre, who ensure that the centre maintains the vision of the Founder. We were indeed fortunate that Yash's comforting guidance behind the scene was available to IUCAA even after his retirement. Jayant V. Narlikar, IUCAA.