Ramanath Cowsik
Ramanath Cowsik | |
---|---|
Born | 1940 Nagpur, India |
Occupation | Astrophysicist |
Years active | Since 1961 |
Employer | Washington University in St. Louis |
Known for | Astroparticle physics |
Spouse | Sudha |
Children | Siddhartha Aditya |
Awards | Padma Shri Shri Hari Om Prerit Vikram Sarabhai Award Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize NASA Public Service Group Achievement Award INSA Vainu Bappu Memorial Medal M. P. Birla Award TWAS Prize ISCA S. N. Bose Birth Centenary Award |
Website | Profile |
Ramanath Cowsik is an Indian astrophysicist[1][2] and the James S. McDonnell Professor of Space Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.[3] He is considered by many as the father of astroparticle physics.[3][4] A recipient of the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize,[5] Cowsik was honored by the Government of India, in 2002, with the fourth highest Indian civilian award of Padma Shri[6]
Biography
Ramanath Cowsik was born in 1940[1] in Nagpur,[7] in the Western Indian state of Maharashtra.[4] He did his schooling in Karnataka which he completed before turning 14 and graduated from Mysore University in 1958,[1] with physics, chemistry and biology as the optional subjects, at the age of 17.[4][7] He continued his master's studies at the Karnatak university in Dharwar,[8] to secure the degree in physics in 1960, aged 19[4] and joined the Atomic Energy Establishment Training School,[9] present day Homi Bhabha National Institute, Trombay where he did a post graduate course.[1][7] He started his career as a member of faculty of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR)[2] in 1961, simultaneously pursuing his doctoral studies to secure a PhD from Bombay University in 1968,[8] researching under the guidance of Professor Yash Pal.[1][2] He taught at TIFR for over forty years, growing over the years as a fellow, a reader, an associate professor, a professor, a senior professor,[7] and reaching the status of a distinguished professor of the institute.[1][2] He also worked as the Director of the Indian Institute of Astrophysics[10] on deputation from TIFR, during the period from 1992 to 2003,[1] where he has been a Vainu Bappu Distinguished Professor.[7] On invitation from P. Buford Price, Cowsik also worked as an assistant professor at the University of California, Berkeley from 1970 to 1973.[4]
In December 2002, he moved to Washington University in St. Louis and serves at the McDonnell Centre for the Space Sciences[11] as the Professor of Physics and Director.[2][8][12] He is the James S. McDonnell Professor of Space Sciences[13] of the institute since 2013.[1][2][4] A former research fellow of the University of Chicago, Cowsik is a visiting professor at the University of California and a visiting fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Physics and Astrophysics, Munich. He has also served as a member of the governing council of the Commission on Cosmic Rays of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics.[7] He is a member of the International Society for Science and Religion and sits in the board of advisors of Forgiveness Research, a community of forgiveness.[14]
Cowsik, who is known to be proficient in languages such as Tamil, Hindi, Kannada, Sanskrit, English, German and French,[4] is married to Sudha, a research instructor and a doctoral degree (PhD) holder, associated with the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics of the Washington University in St. Louis.[15] Cowsik has two sons, Sasha and Aditya, and resides in the city of St. Louis.[4]
Legacy
Ram Cowsik has the attributes I most admire in a scientist. Throughout his entire career, he has thought broadly and creatively about unsolved puzzles at the forefront of physics, says P. Buford Price, renowned physicist.[4]
Ramanath Cowsik is known for his theories related to the Big Bang origin of the universe. He argued that, post the Big Bang, gravitationally dominant relicts were formed from the particles with finite rest mass, resulting in the formation of halos of dark matter with galaxies embedded within.[1][2][7][17] He postulated that this would limit the sums of masses of neutrinos,[4] a phenomenon known in the scientific world as the Cowsik-McClelland bound.[18] These theories are said to have explained the velocity dispersion of particles of dark matter and reproduced the luminosity profiles and ratified the rotation curves of galaxies.[1]
Cowsik is credited with the invention of leaky box and nested leaky box models[2][13][19][20] for the observation of optical and infrared wavelength bands of cosmic rays[2] and employing these models, he is known to have established an observatory for optical astronomy in Hanle, Ladakh, at an altitude of 15,000 feet, reported to be the highest observatory in the world.[1][2][17][19] The observatory is controlled remotely from Bangalore and is operational year round.[4] He is involved in experiments related to Grand Unified Theory and attempts to probe violations of the inverse square law of gravity at sub-millimeter scales. His scientific paper on the role of neutrinos was included by the American Physical Society and the Physics Review[21] magazine, in their selection of 1000 most important scientific papers of the century.[1][2][4]
Cowsik has reported contributions towards understanding highly energetic phenomena in astrophysics such as cosmic ray, pulsar, supernova remnant, gamma ray burst, active galactic nucleus and other similar sources powered by accretion flows.[2][4][7][13][19] His studies cover the diffuse non thermal radiations found all over space as well as radiations from discrete astronomical sources.[2] His experiments are known to be interdisciplinary in nature and bridge the gap between universal phenomena and experimental physics.[2][4] He has conducted extensive research on pre-solar grains of aluminum oxide found in meteorites and has devised a methodology to assess the age of the universe from them.[2][7][19]
Ramanath Cowsik is credited with the first detailed calculations on neutrino fluxes generated atmospheric cosmic ray interactions and observations of the same in underground detectors.[19] These findings have been known to have assisted in the discovery of neutrino oscillations at Super-Kamiokande observatory in Japan.[2][19] He is also known to have made the longest half-life measured in the world which related to that of double beta decay of Te-128, as 7.7 x 1024 years.[17][19] He has also conducted studies on finite temperature corrections to the Casimir forces occur at large separations.[2][19] Cowsik has developed a sensitive torsion balance using which he conducted the first laboratory experiment for the so-called fifth force.[7] He is involved in the development of a more sensitive torsion balance for probing the violations of the Inverse-square law of gravity at millimeter scales,[2][7][13]
Cowsik, who has drawn comparison with the renowned physicist, Enrico Fermi for his achievements in theoretical and experimental physics,[4] has published his experiments and observations in several scientific papers[7] published in peer reviewed journals[22][23][24] and ResearchGate, an online repository has listed 193 of them.[23] He has attended several seminars and conferences and has delivered keynote addresses[25] on astrophysics and the relationship between religion and science.[4] He has edited three books,[7] including "Cosmic Pathways", a collection of essays in physics and astrophysics.[26] He has also assisted other scientists in ratifying their experiments by acting as a reference point; his involvement in the OPERA experiment, a CERN, Geneva and the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso, Gran Sasso collaboration was one such instance.[27]
Awards and recognitions
Ramanath Cowsik is an elected Fellow of the Indian National Science Academy, Indian Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Sciences, India,[citation needed] Indian Geophysical Union and The Academy of Sciences for the Developing World.[1][2][7] He is a Foreign Associate of the National Academy of Sciences, USA,[1][2][7] a life member of the American Physical Society and a member of the International Astronomical Union.[1]
Cowsik received the Shri Hari Om Prerit Vikram Sarabhai Award in 1981, followed by Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize in 1984.[1][2][4][7] NASA awarded him the Public Service Group Achievement Award in 1986[2][4] and the Indian National Science Academy awarded him the Vainu Bappu Memorial Medal in 1997.[1][7] The Government of India honoured him with the civilian award of Padma Shri in 2002[4][6][7] and he received the M. P. Birla Award in 2007.[1] He is also a recipient of TWAS Prize[2] and the ISCA S. N. Bose Birth Centenary Award [7] and has delivered the Sir C. V. Raman Memorial Award Lecture (1996)[2] and the Jawaharlal Nehru Birth Centenary Award Lecture (2002).[1]
See also
References
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s "INSA". INSA. 2015. Retrieved 26 January 2015.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x "Washington University in St. Louis". Washington University in St. Louis. 2015. Retrieved 26 January 2015.
- ^ a b "James S. McDonnell Professor". WUSTL. 15 October 2013. Retrieved 26 January 2015.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s "Newsroom". Washington University in St Louis. 25 February 2005. Retrieved 26 January 2015.
- ^ Sangeeta Menon (1 March 2012). "Mani Bhaumik and Ramanath Cowsik". Video. YouTube. Retrieved 26 January 2015.
- ^ a b "Padma Awards" (PDF). Padma Awards. 2015. Archived from the original (PDF) on 15 October 2015. Retrieved 11 November 2014.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s "John Templeton Foundation". John Templeton Foundation. 2015. Retrieved 26 January 2015.
- ^ a b c "RG Info". 2015. Retrieved 26 January 2015.
- ^ "HBNI". HBNI. 2015. Archived from the original on 24 September 2015. Retrieved 26 January 2015.
- ^ "India Today". India Today. 16 February 1998. Retrieved 26 January 2015.
- ^ "MCSS". Mathnet. 2015. Retrieved 26 January 2015.
- ^ "ISSR". ISSR. 2015. Archived from the original on 18 January 2015. Retrieved 26 January 2015.
- ^ a b c d "WUSTL". WUSTL. 2015. Archived from the original on 10 July 2015. Retrieved 26 January 2015.
- ^ "Forgiving". Forgiving. 2015. Retrieved 26 January 2015.
- ^ "Biochem". Biochem Wustl. 2015. Retrieved 26 January 2015.
- ^ "Hubble Finds Dark Matter Ring in Galaxy Cluster".
- ^ a b c "CTNS". CTNS. 2015. Retrieved 26 January 2015.
- ^ Gianpiero Mangano; Gennaro Miele; Sergio Pastor (2013). Neutrino Cosmology. Cambridge University Press. p. 378. ISBN 9781107013957.
- ^ a b c d e f g h "ISSR Profile". ISSR. 2015. Retrieved 26 January 2015.
- ^ Thomas K. Gaisser (1990). Cosmic Rays and Particle Physics. Cambridge University Press. pp. 279. ISBN 9780521339315. Retrieved 26 January 2015.
'leaky box' wiki.
- ^ "Physics Review". Physics Review. 2015. Retrieved 26 January 2015.
- ^ "Publications" (PDF). Washington University in St. Louis. 2015. Archived from the original (PDF) on 10 September 2015. Retrieved 26 January 2015.
- ^ a b "ResearchGate". 2015. Retrieved 26 January 2015.
- ^ "WorldCat". WorldCat. 2015. Retrieved 26 January 2015.
- ^ Information, Reed Business (June 1987). "New Scientist". Reed Business Information. 114 (1566): 34. ISSN 0262-4079.
{{cite journal}}
:|first1=
has generic name (help) - ^ Badanaval Venkata Sreekantan, R. Cowsik (editors) (1986). Cosmic pathways. Tata McGraw-Hill Pub. Co. p. 411. ISBN 9780074515679.
{{cite book}}
:|author=
has generic name (help) - ^ "Universe Today". Universe Today. 30 December 2011. Retrieved 26 January 2015.
External links
- Sangeeta Menon (1 March 2012). "Mani Bhaumik and Ramanath Cowsik". Video. YouTube. Retrieved 26 January 2015.
- "ResearchGate". 2015. Retrieved 26 January 2015.
- "WorldCat". WorldCat. 2015. Retrieved 26 January 2015.
- v
- t
- e
- Kshitish Ranjan Chakravorty (1954)
- Habib Rahman (1955)
- Laxman Mahadeo Chitale (1957)
- Ram Prakash Gehlote (1957)
- Krishnaswami Ramiah (1957)
- Bal Raj Nijhawan (1958)
- Benjamin Peary Pal (1958)
- Navalpakkam Parthasarthy (1958)
- Surendranath Kar (1959)
- Om Prakash Mathur (1959)
- Homi Sethna (1959)
- Anil Kumar Das (1960)
- A. S. Rao (1960)
- M. G. K. Menon (1961)
- Brahm Prakash (1961)
- Man Mohan Suri (1961)
- Paramananda Acharya (1964)
- Vishnu Madav Ghatage (1965)
- Satish Dhawan (1966)
- Maganbhai Ramchhodbhai Patel (1967)
- Hermenegild Santapau (1967)
- M. S. Swaminathan (1967)
- Guduru Venkatachalam (1967)
- Raja Ramanna (1968)
- Nautam Bhatt (1969)
- Amrik Singh Cheema (1969)
- T. V. Mahalingam (1969)
- P. R. Pisharoty (1970)
- Moti Lal Dhar (1971)
- Zafar Futehally (1971)
- Devendra Lal (1971)
- Charles Correa (1972)
- N. Kesava Panikkar (1973)
- Govind Swarup (1973)
- Achyut Kanvinde (1974)
- Suchitra Mitra (1974)
- C. N. R. Rao (1974)
- Sitaram Rao Valluri (1974)
- Rajagopala Chidambaram (1975)
- Shambhu Dayal Sinvhal (1976)
- B. R. Deodhar (1976)
- B. V. Doshi (1976)
- Atmaram Bhairav Joshi (1976)
- Janaki Ammal (1977)
- Jugal Kishore Choudhury (1977)
- Prafulla Kumar Jena (1977)
- Vishwa Gopal Jhingran (1977)
- Sibte Hasan Zaidi (1977)
- Hari Krishan Jain (1981)
- Gurcharan Singh Kalkat (1981)
- Dinkar Gangadhar Kelkar (1981)
- Krishnaswamy Kasturirangan (1982)
- Satya Prakash (1982)
- V. Narayana Rao (1982)
- Saroj Raj Choudhury (1983)
- Hassan Nasiem Siddiquie (1983)
- María Renée Cura (1984)
- Vasant Gowarikar (1984)
- Pramod Kale (1984)
- Nilamber Pant (1984)
- Myneni Hariprasada Rao (1984)
- M. R. Srinivasan (1984)
- Predhiman Krishan Kaw (1985)
- P. V. S. Rao (1987)
- Ramadas P. Shenoy (1987)
- Saroj Ghose (1989)
- Palle Rama Rao (1989)
- Ram Narain Agarwal (1990)
- Laurie Baker (1990)
- M. R. Kurup (1990)
- Rakesh Bakshi (1991)
- B. L. Deekshatulu (1991)
- Narinder Kumar Gupta (1991)
- Shri Krishna Joshi (1991)
- Raghunath Anant Mashelkar (1991)
- Govindarajan Padmanaban (1991)
- Bangalore Puttaiya Radhakrishna (1991)
- A. V. Rama Rao (1991)
- Ganeshan Venkataraman (1991)
- Madhava Ashish (1992)
- G. S. Venkataraman (1992)
- Kailash Sankhala (1992)
- Vinod Prakash Sharma (1992)
- Joseph Allen Stein (1992)
- Manmohan Attavar (1998)
- Priyambada Mohanty Hejmadi (1998)
- Anil Kakodkar (1998)
- Aditya Narayan Purohit (1998)
- V. K. Saraswat (1998)
- Asis Datta (1999)
- Indira Nath (1999)
- M. S. Ramakumar (1999)
- M. V. Rao (1999)
- S. K. Sikka (1999)
- Vijay P. Bhatkar (2000)
- D. D. Bhawalkar (2000)
- Gurdev Khush (2000)
- Parasu Ram Mishra (2000)
- Sandip Kumar Basu (2001)
- Bisweswar Bhattacharjee (2001)
- V. K. Chaturvedi (2001)
- Ketayun Ardeshir Dinshaw (2001)
- Prem Shanker Goel (2001)
- Goverdhan Mehta (2001)
- C. G. Krishnadas Nair (2001)
- M. S. Raghunathan (2001)
- Sanjaya Rajaram (2001)
- T. V. Ramakrishnan (2001)
- Thirumalachari Ramasami (2001)
- Dasika Durga Prasada Rao (2001)
- Paul Ratnasamy (2001)
- Ashoke Sen (2001)
- Bikash Sinha (2001)
- Suhas Pandurang Sukhatme (2001)
- A. S. Arya (2002)
- Narayanaswamy Balakrishnan (2002)
- Padmanabhan Balaram (2002)
- Dorairajan Balasubramanian (2002)
- Ramanath Cowsik (2002)
- Chaitanyamoy Ganguly (2002)
- Kota Harinarayana (2002)
- Ashok Jhunjhunwala (2002)
- Amitav Malik (2002)
- Katuru Narayana (2002)
- A. Sivathanu Pillai (2002)
- I. V. Subba Rao (2002)
- B. N. Suresh (2002)
- Asok Kumar Barua (2003)
- Shivram Bhoje (2003)
- Jai Bhagwan Chaudhary (2003)
- Sarvagya Singh Katiyar (2003)
- Gyan Chandra Mishra (2003)
- Jai Pal Mittal (2003)
- Sundaram Ramakrishnan (2003)
- Baburao Govindrao Shirke (2003)
- Mahendra Singh Sodha (2003)
- Nagarajan Vedachalam (2003)
- Satish Kumar Kaura (2004)
- Nalini Ranjan Mohanty (2004)
- T. S. Prahlad (2004)
- Vishweshwaraiah Prakash (2004)
- K. N. Shankara (2004)
- Lalji Singh (2004)
- Rajpal Singh Sirohi (2004)
- M. Vijayan (2004)
- Dipankar Banerjee (2005)
- Srikumar Banerjee (2005)
- Banwari Lal Chouksey (2005)
- Bhagavatula Dattaguru (2005)
- Vasudevan Gnana Gandhi (2005)
- Madhu Sudan Kanungo (2005)
- M. Mahadevappa (2005)
- Ramachandran Balasubramanian (2006)
- Harsh Gupta (2006)
- Seyed E. Hasnain (2006)
- Narendra Kumar (2006)
- B. V. Nimbkar (2006)
- Swaminathan Sivaram (2006)
- Thekkethil Kochandy Alex (2007)
- Rabi Narayan Bastia (2007)
- Dilip K. Biswas (2007)
- Ananda Mohan Chakrabarty (2007)
- Kiran Karnik (2007)
- Thanu Padmanabhan (2007)
- Baldev Raj (2007)
- Sudhir Kumar Sopory (2007)
- Khadg Singh Valdiya (2007)
- Kasturi Lal Chopra (2008)
- Joseph H. Hulse (2008)
- Bhavarlal Jain (2008)
- Kaleem Ullah Khan (2008)
- Sant Singh Virmani (2008)
- Pramod Tandon (2009)
- Goriparthi Narasimha Raju Yadav (2009)
- Vijay Prasad Dimri (2010)
- Pucadyil Ittoop John (2010)
- Palpu Pushpangadan (2010)
- M. R. S. Rao (2010)
- Vijayalakshmi Ravindranath (2010)
- Ponisseril Somasundaran (2010)
- M. Annamalai (2011)
- Moni Lal Bhoumik (2011)
- Coimbatore Narayana Rao Raghavendran (2011)
- Suman Sahai (2011)
- G. Shankar (2011)
- E. A. Siddiq (2011)
- Subra Suresh (2011)
- V. Adimurthy (2012)
- Rameshwar Nath Koul Bamezai (2012)
- Krishna Lal Chadha (2012)
- Virander Singh Chauhan (2012)
- Y. S. Rajan (2012)
- Jagadish Shukla (2012)
- Vijaypal Singh (2012)
- Lokesh Kumar Singhal (2012)
- Manindra Agrawal (2013)
- Mustansir Barma (2013)
- Avinash Chander (2013)
- Sanjay Govind Dhande (2013)
- Jayaraman Gowrishankar (2013)
- Sharad P. Kale (2013)
- Sankar Kumar Pal (2013)
- Deepak B. Phatak (2013)
- Mudundi Ramakrishna Raju (2013)
- Ajay K. Sood (2013)
- K. VijayRaghavan (2013)
- Sekhar Basu (2014)
- Madhavan Chandradathan (2014)
- Jayanta Kumar Ghosh (2014)
- Ravi Grover (2014)
- Ramakrishna V. Hosur (2014)
- E. D. Jemmis (2014)
- A. S. Kiran Kumar (2014)
- Ajay Kumar Parida (2014)
- M. Y. S. Prasad (2014)
- Brahma Singh (2014)
- Vinod K. Singh (2014)
- Govindan Sundararajan (2014)
- Subbiah Arunan (2015)
- Jacques Blamont (2015)
- N. Prabhakar (2015)
- Prahlada (2015)
- S. K. Shivakumar (2015)
- Mylswamy Annadurai (2016)
- Dipankar Chatterji (2016)
- Satish Kumar (2016)
- Onkar Nath Srivastava (2016)
- Veena Tandon (2016)
- G. D. Yadav (2016)
- Jitendra Nath Goswami (2017)
- Chintakindi Mallesham (2017)
- Amitava Roy (2018)
- Vikram Chandra Thakur (2018)
- Rajagopalan Vasudevan (2018)
- Manas Bihari Verma (2018)
- Uddhab Bharali (2019)
- Baldev Singh Dhillon (2019)
- Rohini Godbole (2019)
- Subhash Kak (2019)
- Raman Gangakhedkar (2020)
- Sujoy K. Guha (2020)
- K. S. Manilal (2020)
- Vashishtha Narayan Singh (2020)
- Thalappil Pradeep (2020)
- H. C. Verma (2020)
- Sudhir K. Jain (2020)
- Rattan Lal (2021)
- Subbanna Ayyappan (2022)
- Sanghamitra Bandyopadhyay (2022)
- Aditya Prasad Dash (2022)
- Moti Lal Madan (2022)
- Anil K. Rajvanshi (2022)
- Ajay Kumar Sonkar (2022)
- Jyantkumar Maganlal Vyas (2022)
- Khadar Valli Dudekula (2023)
- Modadugu Vijay Gupta (2023)
- Ganesh Nagappa Krishnarajanagara (2023)
- Arvind Kumar (2023)
- Mahendra Pal (2023)
- Bakshi Ram (2023)
- Sujatha Ramdorai (2023)
- Abbareddy Nageswara Rao (2023)