IUCAA - Khagol # 129 - Oct 2022 - English

| KHAG L | No. 129 - OCTOBER 2022 | 04 and tragic demise, and so I will not say much here except for a few personal reminiscences. I remember a paper that he and his wife Vasanthi coauthored in Nature in 1985, which on cosmological implications of unstable neutrinos. It was considered very interesting and there were comments about it in the research roundup of the same issue. That was a very impressive performance, especially given that his Ph.D. work was on formal aspects of gravitation theory and he wasin the early stage of his work on the Universe. He quickly became an expert and leading worker in cosmology and in 1993 published his first book, Structure Formation in the Universe. He and I were in Cambridge when the book was first published, and I remember Prof. Donald Lynden-Bell holding it up in the Institute of Astronomy library for all to see. Thereafter Paddy wrote many books, both highly technical and at the popular level. The books are all universally admired, read and used in teaching all over the world. His output was very prodigious and quite out of scale with his age. I remember introducing him to one of my foreign visitors in IUCAA, who was totally astonished to find a relatively young person in place of the senior citizen who he thought would be the author of so many papers and books. The books will remain the long-lasting legacy of Paddy. They are all on important and deep issues of physics, astrophysics and cosmology and will remain relevant for a long, long time. Paddy was a fine and impressive speaker at all levels. But sometimes he was rather formidable in his approach, his argument being that the subject matter was so important that the listeners needed to invest time and effort in understanding what he was saying about it. There was no need for him to simplify the content, it was upto the audience to rise to the occasion. I remember a presentation he made many years ago in the badminton hall of IUCAA, which was specially set up for the meeting, to a fairly large number of people from the UGC and related organisations. I believe it was on how institutional frameworks could be managed. It began with a rather complex slide with many different A. Kembhavi I first met Prof. T. Padmanabhan about 43 years ago, when he joined TIFR as a graduate student in 1979. I will address himas Paddy here, which of course was the name by which he was universally known, but I always addressed him by his full name, even while referring to him in conversation with others. He occasionally remarked on the fact, but that is where the matter remained. I left for a postdoc some months after he joined TIFR, and by the time I returned about three years later, he was doing verywell, rising rapidly in his field and had a position in TIFR. We were both students of Jayant Narlikar, but we worked in rather different fields and had no common interests. But the many years of association, first in TIFR, occasionally in Cambridge and then in IUCAA brought us close. A great deal has been spoken and written about Paddy, especially after his untimely behind? On this count, one would unhesitatingly say that he not only carried forward the formidable legacy but he had many fold enriched it. The true measure of one's contributions is what is left behind for people to drawupon and get inspired. On all counts he was one of the most prolific and creative scientists of his time and had an intimidating aura around him. He was the sharpest mind which was at the same time deep and profound. It is to this memory I sign off.