I am reading a book `white
dwarfs to black holes-legacy of S Chandrasekhar.'In Chandra's time,
there were no electronic computers.. and they used to do extensive
numerical calculations using hand held machines. he used to have an
assistant who would do all such calculations- mainly numerical
integrations- and was called a computer! Chandra had 4-5 computers in
his time !
I am reading a book `white dwarfs to black holes- legacy of S
Chandrasekhar'. In Chandra's time, there were no electronic computers..
and they used to do extensive numerical calculations using hand held
machines. He used to have an assistant who would do all such
calculations- mainly numerical integrations- and was called a computer!
Chandra had 4-5 computers in his time!
Looking back: Einstein never used a computer like the ones we have!
Another thing about Chandra was his lectures were full of
mathematical derivations. Rarely he would make a mistake of a factor of
two or sign- and when found, he would be delighted to correct it!
I was wondering how someone can be so perfectionist. I thought of this
Saying `its fine to make mistakes, but at least make new ones!'.
I have started noting the mistakes I do in calculations in solving
problems. most are repetitions of same mistakes: not noticing the
summing index, forgetting to write a factor while expanding brackets,
and many more.
Atleast if we don't make same mistakes, our work should be better.
I remember being told by my Maths teacher, mind works faster than
hand! and I recall how our Quantum teacher would compute the second
derivatives of functions and substitute in a second order differential
equations directly. Those functions of the type: e^(something) *
(something).
All these things just need simple observations, and spending a while
with the problem, after having solved it, thinking `how I can do this in
a better way next time'.
Another thing about Chandra is that he wrote his first paper at the
age of 18. That is first year of his graduation perhaps. So also,
Josephson, and many other great scientists were absolutely young when
they made important discoveries.I wonder why even now I am not close to
any new results... and why I haven't done it earlier... why is it that
so many project works that we do in graduation, post graduation don't
result in a single publication.
I don't wish to blame the present system, but finding flaws in it
will help to improve it.
1.Project students are never thrown into open research areas, areas
never explored before. Because guides themselves may not be confident of
helping in those areas. Whereas I have two incidences, just to name few,
where abroad students
bravely enter in new areas:
:- One guy entered in his lab, let the paper fall down, and the paper
landed after swirls in air, and he told his guide that I want to study
the fluid dynamics patterns in this problem. They set up an experiment,
and studied the same in two dimensions.
:- Other incidence is that of a research scholar asking `why coffee
leaves stains on the boundary, and not a filled circular patch where the
coffee drop lands on the cloth?'
:- Third one is that of a set of young astronomers, who patiently
observed the asteroids for years, and found that their spin axis were
all aligned perpendicular to their plane of orbit...
2. Guides don't have much faith in students' capabilities... ohh, what a
graduate student can do! let them study the textbooks first. or atmost
work out an already done research paper. and then students also feel
that research is something done only after 6 years after 12th standard.
In these situations we land up just being repeaters, and not
for-leaders. And having grown in same envioronments, when PhDs and Post
docs from here take the students, they also give the same kind of
projects and the story continues.
We end up taking the science as the boundary of our knowledge, rather
than a place from where to start our venture.
So, let's break the boundaries!
Author: Abhay M. Karnataki.Abhay is a student of
physics and right now he's completing his phd.
