At a time when the Margazhi season?s musical wave literally casts a magical spell on the city, a well-attended science gathering has given the state more moments of glory. The latest edition of the Indian Science Congress in Chennai witnessed scientists belonging to Tamil Nadu getting heaps of praise and honours from dignitaries, experts and academicians.
?Tamil Nadu has a unique place in the world of Indian science. India?s first Nobel laureate in the sciences, Dr CV Raman, was a proud student of Presidency College, Chennai. So was Professor S Chandrasekhar. The state has also produced one of India?s greatest mathematicians, Srinivasa Ramanujan,? said Prime Minister Manmohan Singh while inaugurating the 98th Indian Science Congress on January 3 at the sprawling SRM University campus in the city suburbs. Close to 7,000 scientists and 5,000 young delegates were part of the science conclave, which concluded on January 7.
True to the Prime Minister?s observations, Tamil Nadu hosted moments of glory in science and technology, with six Nobel laureates, including its own Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, taking part in the deliberations. Ramakrishnan, who won the Chemistry Nobel in 2009, made it clear that scientists were not movie stars or politicians and science had no space for celebrities. ?Science is about curiosity, and icons and celebrities have no space in science,? he told a gathering of enthusiastic students and scientists who had come to hear the Tamil Nadu-born laureate. Amartya Sen, Timothy Hunt, Ada Yonath, Martin Chalfie and Thomas Steitz were the other Nobel winners participating in the event.
Ramakrishnan, the seventh Indian to win the Nobel, has done pioneering work on the ribosome, a cellular machine that makes proteins. ?Scientists should not work in order to grab any honour or recognition. All their research activities should be channelised towards enhancing the knowledge base,? he opined. Ramakrishnan, who was born in 1952 in the temple town of Chidambaram in Tamil Nadu, earned his BSc (Physics) from Maharaja Sayajirao University, Baroda, in 1971, and PhD in Physics from Ohio University, US. As a post-doctoral fellow, he worked at Yale University.
He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry along with Thomas Steitz and Ada Yonath in 2009.
Recalling the immediate impact of his being selected for the Nobel, Ramakrishnan said his e-mail box was clogged by congratulatory messages from India. ?Science developed in one place is useful in another. Science has always been international and not national,? he said. Speaking at the inaugural event, the Tamil Nadu deputy chief minister MK Stalin said, ?I am very happy to attend the Indian Science Congress, held in Tamil Nadu, a land which has produced three of the four Nobel laureates of Indian origin in science.? Taking a serious view of the current scenario in the country, he said it was necessary that there must be a close collaboration between society and industry on the one hand, and research organisations, colleges and universities on the other. It was only when they work in unison that socially and economically relevant technologies can be developed.
He said that, today, Indian scientists are the brains behind almost all the leading research and development projects in the world. It is a matter of pride that more than 100 Fortune 500 companies have established their research and development facilities in India. In a knowledge-driven world, the demand for Indian scientists will continue to grow. India and the Indian universities must seize this opportunity.
Presenting his paper on ?Nalanda and the pursuit of science?, Amartya Sen said that Nalanda was violently destroyed in an Afghan attack led by the ruthless conqueror Bakhtiyar Khilji in 1193, soon after the foundation of the Oxford University and shortly before the initiation of Cambridge. Nalanda University, an internationally renowned centre of higher education in India, which was established in early fifth century, was ending its existence of more than 700 years even as Oxford and Cambridge were being established. ?Had it not been destroyed and had it managed to survive to our time, Nalanda would have been, by a long margin, the oldest university in the world,? he pointed out.
Nalanda was an ancient centre of learning that attracted students from many countries in the world, particularly China, Tibet, Korea, Japan and the rest of Asia. Nalanda, a residential university, had at its peak 10,000 students, studying various subjects. ?It is also important to recognise that while Nalanda was very special, it was still a part of a larger tradition of organised higher education that developed in India?in Bihar particular,? Sen said.
In recent years, Martin Chalfie in his paper said that government officials, university administrators and clinical researchers have called for a greater emphasis on translation research over basic research. Translational research underlines studies that apply or translate findings in the laboratory into new treatments for medical conditions.
In his presidential address, Professor KC Pandey, general president of the Indian Science Congress Association, said that there was a growing realisation today among scholars, policymakers and other observers that India is lagging behind other key countries and some of its BRIC partners in research investment and output.
Consequently, considerable efforts are being made by the government to invest in education by creating facilities such as Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research, dedicated to the highest international standards of research and science education, he said on a hopeful note.