Tribute to ECG Sudarshan on his 2nd Punya tithi.

Tribute to ECG Sudarshan on his 2nd Punya tithi.

Images : courtesy Wiki Commons.

On this day two years ago - the 13th May, 2018 - India and the world of science lost one of the best theoretical physicist, ECG Sudarshan, who bid final good bye to this world from his home in Texas, USA. Sudarshan enjoys a unique honour of getting nominated for the coveted Nobel Prize for a record nine times, but most unfortunately he could not make the cut even single time. ECG Sudarshan was known for his outspokenness, opinionated and combative mind, mercurial mood and also for his uncanny ways of being candid each time and every time. Ennackal Chandy George Sudarshan (1931 – 2018) - ECG to friends - is considered by many as one of the most brilliant scientific mind to emerge from South Asia. His combative style and his candid opinion often landed him in controversies, and now that he is no more, even the last echoes of the controversies surrounding him will hopefully be laid to rest and he will only be remembered, eternally, for his deep insights and outstanding contributions to fundamental science, particularly in the field of quantum physics.

ECG Sudarshan was born on the 16th September, 1931, to the Syrian Christian parents E I Chandy, who was a revenue inspector in the old Travancore State and to Achamma, a school teacher, at Pallam in Kottayam district, Kerala. He was the second son among three to his parents. ECG’s aptitude for mathematics was apparently evident from his school days. Legend has it that ECG was destined to become a great physicist from very early days. As a young boy Sudarshan, precocious that he was, took deep interest in his older brother’s high school textbooks, which were far too beyond the reach of children of his age. After reading his brothers science (physics) book end to end, ECG was influenced by one of the sentence in the book, which read “the derivation of the formula for the period of a simple pendulum was beyond the scope of the book”. This motivated the young Sudarshan to search for a book, which could actually help him understand the derivation of the formula that could find the period of the simple pendulum. This early quest for going beyond his age in search for an answer and for quenching his thirst for knowledge, ensured that Sudarshan found a life-long love for Physics. After his high school studies,  ECG completed his two-year Intermediate at the Church Missionary Society (CMS) College (established in 1817) in Kottayam in 1948. He then moved to Madras (now Chennai) and joined the Madras Christian College (MCC) for his B Sc (Honours) in Physics, which he completed in 1951. He stayed in the MCC college in Madras for a year after his degree and worked as a demonstrator in physics. A year later, in 1952, ECG received his MA degree from the University of Madras. He then joined the famed Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) in Bombay (now Mumbai) in February/ March, 1952, as a research student. 

At TIFR, ECG worked with Dr Bhabha and  spent three years (1952 – 55) in Bhaba’s cosmic ray group at TIFR, Mumbai. This was the time when TIFR had best of scientists working in the field of cosmic ray physics, which was led by its founder Bhabha himself and others that included, MGK Menon and Sreekantan. The cosmic ray physics group in TIFR was nurtured by Bhabha and went on to receive international recognition for their studies of the characteristics of high energy cosmic rays using a variety of detectors at ground level, mountain altitude as well as in deep underground mines. TIFR scientists; Sreekantan and others made early experiments in deep Kolar Gold Field (KGF) mines, which  ultimately led to studies of energetic muons at a depth of up to 2760 metres. All this meant that there was a constant movement of scientists from other countries, including USA to TIFR. One such scientists to visit TIFR during ECG’s time was Robert Marshak, from the University of Rochester in the USA. Marshak, was highly impressed by the bright young student ECG, who he had met at TIFR. He asked ECG if he would be willing to join him for a PhD in US. Sudarshan agreed and left TIFR to move to US. Sudarshan worked on in his PhD along with his guide, Marshak, and in the course proved in (1957) that the weak interaction acts through currents of the form, and determines where is a vector and a pseudo vector and this work subsequently came to be known as the VA Theory of weak interactions. Three other scientists, Sheldon Glashow, Abdus Salam and Steven Weinberg, developed this work further. The VA theory work, which was started by ECG and his guide Marshak,  eventually evolved as an electro weak theory of weak interactions that won Glashow, Salam and Weinberg the Nobel Prize. Unfortunately Sudarshan and Professor Marshak were left behind and not considered for their contributions to the commencement of this field of work.

The Nobel Prize in Physics, 1979, which was awarded jointly to Glashow, Salam and Weinberg "for their contributions to the theory of the unified weak and electromagnetic interaction between elementary particles, including, inter alia, the prediction of the weak neutral current”, reveals that ECG’s work was a milestone in the development of weak interaction theory. Normally, such a vital contribution should have led ECG to the coveted Nobel Prize, but unfortunately his discovery was bogged down by unnecessary controversy. Marshak and Sudarshan’s paper was presented in a conference proceedings in 1957, but six months later, the famous Caltech duo of Richard Feynman and Murray Gell-Mann published a paper with the same result, derived in a different way. The controversy over who gets the priority for the recognition of this work has lasted to the present day and the fact that Feynman was already a very famous scientist from Caltech, may have ensured a stalemate. As a result, the Nobel Committee played safe by deciding not to award this discovery to either of the groups despite multiple nominations for Marshak and Sudarshan. This was one of those nine nominations, which ECG earned for the coveted Nobel Prize, that eluded him.

The unfortunate incident of missing out the coveted Nobel Prize, embittered Sudarshan for life and accentuated his rebellion attitude. ECG’s rebellion attitude was seen from his early days. He renounced his Christian religion, to which he was born since  he was unable to reconcile the Church with his love for physics. In one of his memoirs ECG says “I was born in an Orthodox Christian family. I was very deeply immersed in it, and so by the age of seven I had read the entire Bible from Genesis to Revelation two or three times. I was not quite satisfied with Christianity, and gradually I got more and more involved with traditional Indian ideas.” His rebellion for the religious thoughts however did not inhibit his scientific creativity. In 1962, with Bilaniuk and Deshpande, he proposed the existence of a hypothetical particle called tachyons - which was hypothesised to travel faster than the speed of light. This paper in a way was aimed at proving one of Albert Einstein’s theories,  which states that ‘Nothing can move faster than light’, wrong. However, it was eventually proved that such a particle - tachyon - could not exist in reality as it would defy the fundamental laws of physics. The term tachyon, however, is still used even today as a placeholder for an imaginary particle with a quantum field that plays a crucial role in theoretical physics.

In 1963, Sudarshan proved the equivalence of semiclassical and quantum descriptions of light beams using what is now known as the Sudarshan-Glauber representation, which is a foundational work in the science of quantum optics. Glauber, however, did not initially accept this representation, and it was only later,  after his correspondence and interaction with Sudarshan that Glauber reinvented it. Most unfortunately and to the ‘amazement and horror’ of Sudarshan, the 2005 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to three scientists one of them was Glauber who shared half the prize amount while the other half went to John Hall and Theodor Hansch. Glauber was awarded for his work in ‘quantum optics’, and in the process Sudarshan’s seminal work had been overlooked yet again for the coveted Nobel Prize. 

This time however, Sudarshan openly expressed his anguish against the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, who had ignored him for the 2005 Nobel Prize and instead had  chosen to give the Nobel prize to RJ Glauber “for his contribution to the quantum theory of optical coherence”.  He wrote an open letter expressing his anguish against the Royal Sweedish Academy. In a letter to the Academy, he wrote “In the announcement of the 2005 Physics Nobel Prize, the Swedish Royal Academy has chosen RJ Glauber to be awarded half of the prize. The prize winners are chosen by the Royal Academy, but no one has the right to take my discoveries and formulations and ascribe them to someone else. The correct formulation of the quantum mechanical treatment of optics was carried out by me in my paper in 1963”. Unfortunately his letter was ignored. 

In 1969, Sudarshan moved from Rochester to the University of Texas at Austin, where he remained till his death. From 1970 onwards, for next 21 years,ECG held the position of director of Centre of Particle Theory at Texas. During this period, in the year 1977, Sudarshan and Baidyanath Mishra quantified the quantum Zeno effect. Earlier, in 1961, Homi Bhabha had tried to lure ECG back to TIFR, but somehow that did not work out. However, ECG with his love for Indian traditions, remained attached to TIFR as an Honorary Fellow until his last. In fact, Sudarshan  - who always retained his Indian passport  - kept coming to India for extended periods. He was also the senior professor at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore from 1971 to 1991. He founded the Centre for Theoretical Studies (CTS) at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc),:Bengaluru in 1972. He also accepted the Directorship of the Institute of Mathematical Sciences at Chennai in 1986. He would spend six months a year at the IMSc Chennai and the other six months he used to spend at Austin, Texas, USA. Sudarshan was able to contribute majorly to the development of IMSc particularly in the areas of improved personnel and budget for the institute. However, his outspokenness, his mercurial moods and his idiosyncratic style of management led to a series of controversies, which lasted during the whole of his tenure.

Although ECG missed the coveted Nobel Prize, he was honoured with many other prestigious awards, including the Dirac medal of the the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) in 2010, The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) Physics award (1985), the Bose Medal (1977), and the Majorana prize. In India, he was awarded the coveted C.V. Raman prize (1970). He was also awarded the Padma Bhushan (1976) and the Padma Vibhushan (2007). He lived a long life, despite the frustration of having twice been passed over for the Nobel prize and of seeing others awarded for the work, which was truly his. But that transient pain of the frail human psyche is now over, and it is only the outstanding scientific legacy of E.C.G. Sudarshan, which will last for future generations to study and admire.

ECG also had other interests. He was attracted to Indian traditions and Hinduism and chose the name 'Sudarshan' in the year 1970. He was also interested in Vedanta studies. He practiced Vedanta and delivered several lectures on the Vedantic school of philosophy. He was also deeply interested in Malayalam literature and spoke in typical Kottayam accent, wherever he travelled all over the world. He was deeply intrigued by Indic studies, and read classical Indian texts avidly in conjunction with philosophical treatises. Sudarshan was married to Lalitha Rao, daughter of former chief justice of the High Court of Mysore state, Nittur Srinivasa Rao—a famous Gandhian and a freedom fighter. They have three sons. Later, he got married to Bhamati, professor and head of department of physics at the Madras University. 

Professor ECG Sudarshan undoubtedly was a world class physicist and the Nobel committee has been completely unfair to the science community by denying him the coveted Nobel Prize for which he was nominated 9 times. In hindsight we can say it is Nobel’s loss and not that of ECG Sudarshan’s.  Long live ECG and his scientific legacy.