courtesy: Kriishnaswami Alladi
The Alladi Diary
On a balmy winter’s day in 1954, Paul Dirac a Nobel Laureate in physics gave a general lecture at the Senate House in the University of Madras. The hall was packed. Outside, people sat in…
S.Muthiah (1930-2019)
(Courtesy: Mylapore Times. Photograph by Ganesh Natarajan.) Sitting at my desk in Boston, in MIT where I edited strands of DNA for the Human Genome Project, I’d read S. Muthiah’s Madras Miscellany during breaks. I…
The Best Little Bird Sanctuary in India
If you went to school in Chennai, chances are you have visited the Vedanthangal Bird Sanctuary, some fifty miles south of the city. As an eighth grader, I went there on a school excursion. Oblivious…
Stirring up Debates
Sometimes, an article I write stirs up intense debates. Like so. The title of the post relates to a debate going on over at the Science Careers Blog. The editor there was responding to an…
pic credit: Pratham Books
Anna Mani, Indian weather scientist
Anna Mani, student of CV Raman, made independent India self-reliant in measuring aspects of the weather, and helped lay the ground for harnessing solar and wind power as alternative sources of energy.
On Self-Driving in Madras…
A memorable scene in the 1963 Tamil movie, Paar Magale Paar, features Cho Ramaswamy who makes his screen debut as “Mechanical” Madasamy. As a teen, this character had run away to the Tamil capital, where…