A limitless life

Cross posted at Critical Twenties



The Indian chemist Chintamani Nagesa Ramachandra Rao (known as C N R Rao) is one of the foremost solid-state and materials chemists in the world. His output- more than a thousand papers and forty books- is phenomenal by most scientific standards. He has been one of the founding fathers of the field in the last fifty years. There are very few living chemists in any field who have worked in such diverse areas. Rao’s work has been recognized by several honors, including election to the Indian science academies, the Royal Society and the US National Academy of Sciences. Very few scientists have influenced Indian science in the last half century to the extent that he has. In his native city of Bangalore he is virtually worshipped by some; I have seen a traffic intersection named after him.

Rao has now written an biography in which he catalogs his life and times in chemistry. It’s worth reading, especially if you want to get a glimpse of science in a developing country and the kind of efforts it takes to do research in such a place.

Rao grew up in post-independence India where the fledgling republic was striving to get its feet off the ground. India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, was probably the most scientifically literate and ambitious of all the country’s leaders and placed a premium on scientific and technological development. It was under his leadership that the Indian Institutes of Technology and many of the leading national laboratories were established. Rao grew up in the 1940s and did his undergraduate work at the Banaras Hindu University in the holy city of Banaras, situated along the banks of the Ganges River. As a 19-year old undergraduate he published his first paper in Science on electrical discharges. After graduation he applied to Linus Pauling for his PhD. However, Pauling was then vigorously engaged in deciphering the structure of proteins and was not involved with the kind of experimental physical chemistry that Rao was interested in. He referred Rao instead to John Livingston at Purdue University, who was a leader in electron diffraction.

After finishing his PhD at Purdue, Rao went to Berkeley for a postdoc where he was engrossed by the likes of Glenn Seaborg, Melvin Calvin and others who had made Berkeley a Mecca for chemistry and physics. His scientific output was already outstanding- about 30 papers in leading journals- and it would have been easy for him to get a top faculty position in the US. However, Rao wanted to return to India and got a faculty appointment at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc). He also got married to a woman (Indu) who has been a great source of strength and wisdom for him since then. Apart from a productive stint at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, Rao has spent his entire career at IISc and then at the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advances Scientific Research (JNCASR) which he founded.

The next part of the book is the part that’s most interesting. By that point (late 50s), chemistry had been revolutionized by two great developments. One was the invention of key instrumental techniques like NMR spectroscopy and x-ray diffraction. The other development was the formulation of a theoretical framework for chemistry through quantum mechanics, pioneered by Pauling, Slater, Mulliken etc. These developments were virtually unknown in India and were almost non-existent in the university curriculum. Along with a small band of other chemists, Rao was instrumental in establishing these modern chemical concepts in India. He did this, firstly by being one of the first to teach courses in quantum chemistry, spectroscopy etc. and secondly by founding a vigorous program of modern chemical research. He was certainly one of the few pioneers of modern chemistry in post-independence India; one is reminded of the American school of modern physics which Robert Oppenheimer founded at Berkeley in the 30s. Rao’s perseverance in overcoming fundamental odds like the lack of equipment and the Indian bureaucracy is noteworthy. Rao also made solid-state chemistry respectable when work in that discipline was far from fashionable. His descriptions of the threadbare capabilities of Indian science and the efforts necessary to overcome these are intriguing and inspiring. It definitely took a lot of courage and was an enormous gamble for Rao to decide to establish his career in India during that time, especially when his career would certainly have flourished anywhere in Europe or the US. But it ultimately paid off and allowed Rao to make contributions that were far greater in terms of social and national impact compared to the contributions he would have been able to make elsewhere.

So how does one do high-quality research in a resources and cash-strapped developing country? Rao’s approach is worth noting. He knew that the accuracy of measurements he could do with the relatively primitive equipment in India could never compete with sophisticated measurements in Europe or the US. So instead of aiming for accuracy, Rao aimed at interesting problems. He would pick a novel problem or system where even crude measurements would reveal something new. Others may then perform more accurate measurements on the system, but his work would stand as the pioneering work in the area. This approach is worth emulating and should be especially emphasized by young scientists starting out in their careers: be problem-oriented rather than technique-oriented. Another key lesson from Rao's life is to not work in crowded fields; Rao would often contribute the initial important observations in the field and then move on while it was taken over by other scientists. This also keeps one from getting bored. Embodying this philosophy allowed Rao to work in a vast number of areas. He started with spectroscopic investigations of liquids, moved to inorganic materials and further worked extensively on organic materials. Among other things, he has made significant contributions to unraveling the structures and properties of transition metal oxides, ceramic superconductors and materials displaying giant magneto-resistance. All these had special physical and chemical properties which were directly a result of their unique structures. Rao co-authored an internationally recognized book- “New Directions in Solid-State and Structural Chemistry”- which encapsulates the entire field.

However, sometimes not having the right technique can prove significantly debilitating. In the 80s, the world of science was shaken by the discovery of ‘high-temperature’ superconductivity in a ceramic material. In fact Rao had synthesized the exact same material - an oxide of copper, lanthanum and barium - more than fifteen years before. However, the compound became superconducting at 30 degrees Kelvin and could be studied only in liquid helium. Unfortunately Rao was unable to do measurements at this temperature because the only relevant material available in his laboratory was liquid nitrogen, which boils at 77 K. If liquid helium had been available, Rao might well have been the first person to observe superconductivity in this material. In 1987, two scientists at IBM who discovered the phenomenon were awarded the Nobel Prize.

The later parts of the book deal with Rao’s experiences as a top government advisor and his relationships with several leading scientists including Nobel laureates like Nevill Mott and Philip Anderson. He also laments the current state of science education in India where most bright students prefer to study financially lucrative disciplines like information technology, business and medicine. The Indian middle class is still stuck in a peculiar frame of mind in which intelligence and achievement is necessarily measured by the amount of money you make. Understandably, many Indian middle class parents who themselves grew up in relative poverty want their children to be financially successful. But as Rao says, this attitude is adversely affecting the scientific future of the country and is siphoning off talent from science and technology research. For now, about the only solution to this problem is the infusion of funds in science education and research with a view to making these fields financially sustainable. Some steps in this direction have been taken with the establishment of the Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research (IISER), but much more needs to be done. Unfortunately, Rao has relatively few thoughts on practical policies which could bring about such a change. This is probably the most disappointing part of the book since Rao, with his enormous experience in Indian science and government, enjoys a unique vantage point and would have been the idea guide to offer solutions and policy recommendations. But apart from stressing the importance of science education and science, he has few deep thoughts on the problem.

The book ends with some interesting appendices and reflections. One is a “Letter to a Young Chemist” in which Rao succinctly catalogs the excitement of solid-state and materials chemistry. Another essay on science and spirituality is again disappointing; while Rao clearly sees no conflict between the two, the essay is only two pages long and superficial. The last essay titled “Science as a Way of Life” is a masterful exposition on the kind of attitude one needs to be a scientist, and the role of science in our society. Here Rao teaches by example. As attested by his colleagues and friends, he has been completely dedicated to science throughout his life and demands the same kind of unflinching commitment from his students and co-workers. He still spends almost every free minute in the lab and intends to follow the example of some of his scientific heroes in working till the last day of his life. While this intensity has often made him a demanding teacher and taskmaster, no one can accuse him of not walking the talk. Rao talks about the international community of scientists and how it has helped him. He also talks about prejudices still standing in the way of international cooperation, including the occasional racism he encountered at Purdue in the 50s, which can be rapidly dissolved by the bonds of scientific kinship.

The great thing about science is that like music and art it is truly without boundaries and constitutes an international community. As Rao himself has demonstrated, excellence in science does not ask for one’s nationality, religion, gender, sexual inclination or political views. All it asks for are an open mind, healthy skepticism, honest dedication and respect for knowledge and inquiry. As Rao’s life exemplifies, cultivating these qualities can lead to a life that is extraordinarily rewarding and enriching.

Link: An extended video interview of Rao on the Vega Science Trust website conducted by his friend, chemist Anthony Cheetham of UCSB and Cambridge. The interview is worth watching and covers Rao's life, science, public service and home life.

Ethics and Indian Science

I have started contributing to the blog Critical Twenties which has been launched by an excellent cross-section of intellectually curious Indians scattered across the globe. You can read the description here. The blog is the initiative of Arghya Sengupta, a law student at Oxford University. The following is my first post at the blog and I will be linking here whenever I post.

The story is well-known by now. A graduate student named Heather Ames was doing cancer research at the University of Michigan. At one point she started noticing her experiments going horribly wrong. This started happening so often that the frustrated researcher almost began to question her own sanity. When she complained to her advisor her advisor would not believe it initially. At one point even her advisor suspected, based mostly on second-hand reports, that the young woman was sabotaging her own experiments to gain sympathy. One can only imagine her plight. Finally, by judicious recording of her experiments, she was able to prove beyond a shadow of doubt that someone was tampering with them. When she and her advisor reported the matter to the campus police, the police first gave the poor woman herself a lie-detector test. Only after they were convinced of her innocence did they launch a serious investigation. The winning strategy for catching the culprit turned out to be simple. A camera surreptitiously installed in the lab proved that the young researcher’s colleague, an Indian postdoc named Vipul Bhrigu, was cruelly sabotaging her experiments...

Read the rest of the post on Critical Twenties

The Age of Irreverence

I was away on vacation for some time and seem to have missed this. Raghunath Mashelkar, the former CSIR director, has an editorial in Science where he laments the lack of 'irreverence' in Indian science. Mashelkar's point is well taken, namely, that excessive deference to professors and senior students common in the Indian academic culture can hamper free thinking and the open communication of ideas...


...Read the rest of the post on Desipundit

INDIA'S BAYH-DOLE: INDIA'S SCIENTIFIC RENAISSANCE?

The Bayh-Dole Act passed in the US in 1980 provided universities and academic scientists with ownership of their patents and inventions and led to significant wealth creation in the public research sector. An Indian bill modeled on this act is due to be put up for passage in 2009. This bill could reenergize the Indian research enterprise and potentially be the turning point for India's flagging scientific institutions. As in other such endeavors, it promises fond and cautious hope for Indian scientists, and more than a smidgeon of prudence...

...Read the rest of the entry on my Desipundit blog

CHANDRAYAAN: SPUR IT ON

Chandrayaan was pushed into orbit around the moon two days ago and it should be a proud moment for all Indians. If there's two aspects of Indian scientific research that have progressed almost without interruption in spite of the turns in our economy and the low standards in other scientific fields, they have been nuclear energy and space exploration. Indian nuclear and space scientists have been among the best in the world for decades. And they have accomplished remarkable feats in spite of international constraints, disapproval and sanctions.

So it was a little surprising for me when some condemned the launching of our newest spacecraft as sucking valuable resources away from our strained economy and initiatives for poor people. The critics of Chandrayaan included socialists who as usual started disingenuously bleating about how we have shamelessly engaged in space exploration when our poor cannot afford their daily bread, and libertarians who complained again about how this is a waste of tax rupees. Let me say upfront that if you are really worried about tax rupees, you should look at the other failed schemes of the government, the rampant corruption by middlemen and the ambitious self-aggrandizing ventures that our noble politicians indulge in for sources of income. Just like Americans who are concerned about tax dollars should look at the Iraq War and not ludicrously at healthcare for children, ganging up on important Indian science and technology objectives is misguided criticism.

I for one think the effort to be eminently justified (I am much more skeptical about a mission to Mars though wherein the costs may outweigh the benefits). There are many reasons why I think it makes sense. First of all, it may give a boost to Indian science which continues to stagnate. We are going to face a dangerous deficit of young scientific talent after the old guard of eminent scientists such as Anil Kakodkar, K Kasturirangan, P Balaram and C N R Rao retire. The reason for the deficit is clear; no financial or government incentives for luring young people into scientific research, dated basic facilities at many institutions, a lack of appreciation for basic scientific research and a clear paucity of vision and respect for future scientific development that is going to be crucial for the country.

In the midst of this scenario, the Indian nuclear and space science establishments appear to me to be the last two strongholds of scientific and engineering excellence that still nurture talent and promise real scientific, if not financial, results. But in my opinion, being a nuclear scientist in India in the next few decades is going to be both professionally and financially attractive. Nuclear power is going to emerge as the best bet we have for supporting our booming population and ensuring rapid progress. As our talented scientists and engineers make advances in thorium and related technology, it would be only lack of visionary leadership that would thwart our efforts to be poised to become one of the world leaders in nuclear developments. I believe that the argument for becoming a nuclear scientist in India is going to be as good in the next few years as it ever was.

As far as space science is concerned, there are two clear motives for such missions. Importantly, they lead to collateral but valuable discoveries in basic science, engineering and electronics. This is in addition to their primary motives, in this case the motive being to map the moons surface and study its atmosphere. This has always been a common theme in scientific research. The Apollo space program led to many other inventions and developments that were of general benefit to society. Planning any mission like Chandrayaan involves solving a lot of unforeseen problems on the fly. Solutions to these problems can be generalized and applied in other fields. The Manhattan Project for example provided a windfall of new discoveries, techniques and inventions that benefited sciences like electronics, metallurgy, nuclear reactor engineering and even aviation (the B-52 bombers had to be drastically modified to hoist the bombs). There is no better example of the journey being more valuable than the destination than tackling a complex, important and interdisciplinary scientific problem. Chandrayaan and other endeavors must have eminently satisfied such a condition.

The second motive may sound philosophical but it is probably even more important. In a country like ours where easy money and an overall better life lures many bright minds away from the sciences, we need constant inspiration. The best analogy I can think is of Homer Hickam, whose life story became the catalyst for October Sky, the single-most inspiring movie I have seen. Homer Hickam was a boy growing up in Coalwood, West Virginia in the 1950s, where kids had no future other than being relegated to the lucrative revenue-generating coal mines. But one day, Homer sees Sputnik streaking across the sky, and from then on, he battles entrenched tradition, his father's recalcitrance and many discouraging events to finally attend college and become an engineer for NASA.

Now, Sputnik accelerated funding for science and technology and scientific education in the United States with the goal of beating the Soviets. Maybe we don't have an urgent enemy as formidable as the Soviets. But beating the Soviets was not remotely on Homer's mind when he decided to study rocket science. For him, it was the fact that someone could build an object like that, that rational application of science, mathematics and ideas could culminate in such a dazzling enterprise, that inspired him and set him off on his own trajectory towards space.

If Chandrayaan can inspire even five Homer Hickams in India, our faltering scientific education system and establishment will get a great boost. After that, all that would be necessary would be to provide these five with an infinite field of space across which to blaze their dreams.

C N R RAO, IT AND THE WANING OF YOUNG INTELLECT

Prof. C N R Rao, the doyen of Indian science, seems to have ruffled a few feathers over at The Acorn with his labeling of IT workers in an Outlook piece as ones who are akin to "coolies who are working for wages and not producing great intellectual material". Rao's thrust was at what he sees as a worsening intellectual milieu in Bangalore because of this drain of bright minds towards "lesser" tasks. Naturally people are galled at his unkind words and wonder what he wants to say.

I think there are several points that need to be addressed in his piece. Some of his points seem justified to me, others are not. In general, it seems like he starts off on the right foot and ends up on the wrong one. The right one pertains to lamenting the siphoning off of young, bright people to the IT sector, possibly at a loss to pure scientific research. There is more than a modicum of truth in this fact. In the 1960s, when private engineering and management colleges were very few, bright students chose to study science if only because there were few other options. If you were lucky, you would get admitted into COEP in Pune or VJIT in Bombay, but what other options were there for an aspiring engineer? Many of these aspiring engineers then chose to study science and get into industry or academia. This led to a constant supply of bright, intellectual minds in universities and colleges as well as a constant turnover of talented professionals in R & D and teaching, and I can empathize if someone misses this atmosphere and its benefits. I myself would have loved to have some of my friends who studied engineering study the sciences with me. I would have greatly benefited from their intellectual abilities, and ultimately the whole field would have done so. I am sure the intellectual atmosphere in colleges and universities in the 60s was much more vibrant especially in the sciences than it is now. These days, many students who study science only want to do it as a doorstep degree to get into other fields like management. Naturally their heart is not in the discipline unlike that of many of those in the 60s or 70s.

The result of this is that there is a steadily weakening trickle of highly intelligent and intellectual people who are studying science and the humanities. IT workers are many, gifted young scientists are few in our country. Many of those who would have studied science 25 years ago have been "lost" to IT, there's no doubt about this fact in my mind. And in saying that Rao is absolutely right.

Rao is also not the first or only scientist who laments this decline of young people in basic R & D. Many senior scientists say the same thing, that there were many more talented people in the sciences before than there seem to be now. They bemoan the fact that the generation of Vikram Sarabhai, C. R. Rao, Jayant Narlikar, M S Swaminathan and and in fact C N R Rao himself might have been permanently lost to history. P. Balaram, the present director of IISc. and also one among these stalwarts, also mused over similar matters in many of his fine editorials for the magazine Current Science. The reasons for this decline are also acknowledged and manyfold. The simple financial criterion that attracts people towards fields like IT is a true fact. Add to that declining government salaries, nepotism in science, reservations and the problems therein and a lack of scientific temper among young people and their parents, and it is not surprising that there are few students opting to study the sciences or humanities.

Perhaps most importantly, Rao and others are also right in saying that this negligence of basic scientific research will have serious consequences that may not be visible now. All the applied technology that we take for granted currently, including the foundation of IT, has had its origins in basic scientific research. The development of quantum theory for example was key to the development of electronics. In the past, many private companies like Bell Labs and IBM have been pioneers in this kind of research. But whether funded by private or public funds, the point is that it's only basic research that can sustain technological productivity in the long term. While IT generates jobs, ideas, connectivity and economic benefits, it cannot directly bring about the kind of research that led to the invention of the transistor, the integrated chip, superconductors and Giant Magnetoresistance (GMR) which won a Nobel Prize this year. All these inventions were made possible by basic science. All of them constitute the backbone of the information age. Without such basic scientific research, we are steadily going to lose the raw material of ideas that lead to future technological advances.

To be fair, this problem does not exist only in India. Scientists and policy makers in the US have also lamented for a while now the decline in basic research in private corporations like IBM which in the 80s was a focal point of such research and a nurturing home for Nobel Prize winners. However, it should also be understood that with the growing focus on product development and pleasing investors, companies are going to be increasingly hard-pressed to come up with research pipelines that have a low risk to returns ratio. Basic research by definition does not fit into this category; it is highly risky, promises no immediate returns, and can go on for protracted periods of time before any breakthrough is possible. And yet history has shown that it is the only way to generate ideas and intellectual capital for long-term, path-breaking technological development. For this reason too, it is only the government that will have to increasingly fund such research, even though private corporations will continue to play an occasional pivotal role.

But back to Prof. Rao. Until now, he has gotten it right. A lack of attention to basic research and to scientists who do it will have serious repercussions. It is true that many promising students are pursuing IT, students whose intellectual skills could be valuable in basic R & D. But when Rao blames the IT sector for this, there are some problems with his argument. Some of them have been noted at The Acorn. Clearly, blaming the IT sector is like cursing the darkness. It is better to light a candle. In this case, the only way would be to revamp the scientific curriculum, ramp up salaries and financial incentives for aspiring scientists, improve the teaching of science in school including better communication of popular science, make science attractive for young people by removing prejudices, regionalism and mediocrity in it and in general improve the image of science as an attractive career option. The private sector can also significantly contribute to this awareness with their increasing focus on some university-like research. Pharmaceutical companies for example can fund basic biomedical research in universities. I was disappointed that while Rao criticises the IT sector, he says nothing about how to galvanize his own sector. I share his disappointment with the decline in the intellectual milieu of research and science, but lamenting the virtues of this milieu says nothing about how to reform it.

But one of Prof. Rao's statement which I think galled many was his perceived denouncing of IT workers as everyday Joes who don't do anything creative. Let us put this in perspective. His statements made it sound like he was somehow judging routine work to be inferior compared to intellectual work. First of all, criticising IT work as being routine is not necessarily an insult. Many IT workers I know have acknowledged that much of their work is routine. There is much virtue in doing an honest job, no matter how routine it is, if you do it well. In addition, even routine jobs can benefit from flashes of creativity. We have to realise that human growth and national development needs every kind of individual input; from the matchmaker's to the poet's. In my opinion, one needs a critical mass of every kind of worker to sustain a healthy economy, vibrant intellectual culture and prosperous technological growth. Clearly we need more clerks than poets, we need more gardeners than fiction writers, and so we also need more IT workers than pure scientists. There is nothing wrong with that. What I would agree with Prof. Rao about is that we have more than the critical mass of IT workers in India right now, while the mass of scientists is dwindling. Whether the current scientific mass is critical or not I cannot say; I often get the feeling it is not. But what I think is certain is that compared to the mass of IT workers, the mass of new scientific talents is not increasing. If this mass becomes less than a certain value, we will face serious long-term effects which won't be ameliorated fast. And it is in recognising this fact that I fully share Prof. Rao's concern. We definitely need more young scientists. While historically the IT sector may have siphoned them off from science, it leads to nothing of value to curse the IT sector to justify the problems in pure science. However, while IT workers are not obliged to fund basic science, there is no doubt that scientific development will get a great boost if they do. So many such cases abound in universities in the US, where wealthy entrepreneurs including IT entrepreneurs have funded highly successful institutes, departments and centers of basic research. These centers have been very productive and contributed immensely in some cases to the science and technology of this country. Clearly it is not too much to ask like Prof. Rao does that such wealthy entrepreneurs in our country too fund some of our science.

But finally, I need to say a word about Prof. Rao's article. Amidst the reaction to his criticism flows the painful nostalgia he feels for his beloved Bangalore. As someone who has been born and been there all his life, we should empathize with the change he disappointedly documents. I can imagine that any senior distinguished citizen of that beautiful city would have felt this change and felt saddened. To blame this change on IT is too narrow-minded a view. But the fact that this change includes some bad aspects inherent in it cannot be doubted. We need more intellectuals and more scientists irrespective of IT or anything else. We need more poetry and music. Anything that treads on these deeply ingrained and important human values needs to be examined. We should not look for a way that would stifle it. But we do have to find a way around it.