Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics — Its Past and the Present

2014 ◽  
Vol 03 (02) ◽  
pp. 46-59
Author(s):  
Amit Ghosh

"An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man" are perhaps the most appropriate words that can be said about Professor Meghnad Saha and Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics (SINP). Prior to the independence of the country Prof. Saha was working very closely with Jawaharlal Nehru and Subash Chandra Bose in framing the national science and planning policy. He was probably the first person in the country to have foreseen the immense potential of nuclear science for the betterment of Indian society. So by 1940, he introduced nuclear physics as part of the university physics curriculum in the University of Calcutta. With supports from Nehru, he received a generous fund from the Dorabji Tata Trust for the procurement and construction of a cyclotron in 1941. After the World War II and followed by the independence of the country in 1947, Prof. Saha realised that nuclear physics had grown to such an extent that to take part in research a separate institution with a close link to the universities was necessary. Thus, the foundation stone of SINP (the then INP, the Institute of Nuclear Physics) was laid down in 1949 and the institute was formally inaugurated on 11 January 1950, by Madame Irene Joliot Curie. Right from its inception, Prof. Saha initiated research in various disciplines of science ranging from astrophysics, plasma physics, physics of materials and biophysics, in the newly born institute and realising the importance of education, he introduced a post-M.Sc. programme, a pre-Ph.D. course, the first of its kind in the country, to bridge the gap between the university curriculum and research. The institute was renamed as SINP after his untimely demise in 1956.

2021 ◽  
Vol 144 (4) ◽  
pp. 411-427

This article examines the career of Hungarian geographer, Tibor Mendöl, who was appointed the first Chair of Human Geography at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest in 1940. Mendöl’s career had a bright start but was shattered following World War II. His story is not unique in Hungary, and in fact was common to other countries in the former Soviet sphere where a generation of geographers shared his fate. The history of Mendöl’s career and the reception of his work reaches beyond the significance of a personal life story. It offers insight into twentieth-century Hungarian geography and into Hungarian scholarly life in general. Mendöl’s career was emblematic of a period when geography–which had been institutionally strong, vital in public thought in Hungary, and important in a policy context–became marginalised within academia, and came very close to disciplinary annihilation. Mendöl was allowed to retain his chair up to his date of retirement, but his disciples had to leave the university. His efforts to publish his work were in turn hindered, and his scientific theories received strong criticism. Students of geography in Budapest probably did not even hear his name uttered, even a few years after his death. Mendöl’s works were even removed from the university curriculum. The output of the more recent Mendöl ‘heritage industry,’ however, proves that the legacy of his work has not yet been exhausted, and that his story remains relevant. Though the protagonist of this story has been dead for more than fifty years, his spirit (or perhaps his phantom) returns occasionally. Varying attitudes towards his life and work–from rejection, through concealment, to carefully expressed and later more bravely- worded tributes–have always been only partially about professional and subject-based issues. Interpretations of his life and work have also always been matters of historiography and politics.


Author(s):  
Richard M. Freeland

This book examines the evolution of American universities during the years following World War II. Emphasizing the importance of change at the campus level, the book combines a general consideration of national trends with a close study of eight diverse universities in Massachusetts. The eight are Harvard, M.I.T., Tufts, Brandeis, Boston University, Boston College, Northeastern and the University of Massachusetts. Broad analytic chapters examine major developments like expansion, the rise of graduate education and research, the professionalization of the faculty, and the decline of general education. These chapters also review criticisms of academia that arose in the late 1960s and the fate of various reform proposals during the 1970s. Additional chapters focus on the eight campuses to illustrate the forces that drove different kinds of institutions--research universities, college-centered universities, urban private universities and public universities--in responding to the circumstances of the postwar years.


2021 ◽  
pp. 096777202110121
Author(s):  
Peter D Mohr ◽  
Stephanie Seville

George Archibald Grant Mitchell, OBE, TD, MB, ChB, ChM, MSc, DSc, FRCS (1906–1993) was a professor of anatomy at the University of Manchester from 1946 to 1973. He is mainly remembered for his research in neuroanatomy, especially of the autonomic nervous system. He studied medicine at the Aberdeen University, and after qualifying in 1929 he held posts in surgery and anatomy and worked as a surgeon in the Highlands. In 1939, he joined the Royal Army Medical Corps. He was based in Egypt and the Middle East, where he carried out trials of sulphonamides and penicillin on wounded soldiers; in 1943, he returned to England as Adviser in Penicillin Therapy for 21 Army Group, preparing for the invasion of Europe.


2008 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 534-564 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Dorn

The fairer sex takes over and the campus becomes a woman's world. They step in and fill the shoes of the departing men and they reveal a wealth of undiscovered ability. The fate of the A.S.U.C. [Associated Students of the University of California] and its activities rests in their hands and they assume the responsibility of their new tasks with sincerity and confidence. —Blue and Gold, University of California, Berkeley, 1943During World War II, female students at the University of California, Berkeley—then the most populous undergraduate campus in American higher education—made significant advances in collegiate life. In growing numbers, women enrolled in male-dominated academic programs, including mathematics, chemistry, and engineering, as they prepared for home-front employment in fields traditionally closed to them. Women also effectively opposed gendered restrictions on extracurricular participation, filling for the first time such influential campus leadership positions as the presidency of Berkeley's student government and editorship of the university's student newspaper. Female students at Berkeley also furthered activist causes during the war years, with the University Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA) serving as one of the most popular outlets for their political engagement. Historically rooted in a mission of Christian fellowship, by the 1940s the University YWCA held progressive positions on many of the nation's central social, political, and economic issues. Throughout the war years, women dedicated to promoting civil liberties, racial equality, and international understanding led the organization in its response to two of the most egregious civil rights violations in U.S. history: racial segregation and Japanese internment.


2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 251-261
Author(s):  
Shaul Katzir

Historians, philosophers, and physicists portray the 1920s and 1930s as a period of major theoretical breakthrough in physics, quantum mechanics, which led to the expansion of physics into the core of the atom and the growth and strengthening of the discipline. These important developments in scientific inquiry into the micro-world and light have turned historical attention away from other significant historical processes and from other equally important causes for the expansion of physics. World War II, on the other hand, is often seen as the watershed moment when physics achieved new levels of social and technical engagement at a truly industrial scale. Historians have shown that military interests and government funding have shaped physics to unprecedented degree, and according to some, to the extent of discontinuity with earlier practices of research (Forman 1987; Kevles 1990; Kaiser 2002). In this vein, Stuart Leslie wrote, “Nothing in the prewar experience fully prepared academic scientists and their institutions for the scale and scope of a wartime mobilization that would transform the university, industry, and the federal government and their mutual interrelationships” (Leslie 1993, 6). While one can never befullyready for novelties, the contributors to this issue show that developments in interwar physics did prepare participants for their cold war interactions with industry and government.


1975 ◽  
Vol 157 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
John M. Throne

Studies by investigators at the University of Iowa Child Welfare Station before World War II demonstrated that the intelligence levels of the mentally retarded could be raised, often up to and beyond normalcy (IQ 100). Yet, the implications were never seriously followed up on anything approaching a broad-gauged scale. The juridical climate now supports the position that, because the evidence is that all the retarded can learn under proper conditions, they are all entitled to public schooling. It is suggested that the public schools may soon be confronted with an even more far-reaching educo-legal thrust based on the kind of evidence first reported by the Iowa investigators; that is, the public schools have a responsibility not only to educate or train the retarded to achieve their retarded potentialities, but to increase those potentialities, i.e., raise their intelligence levels.


2003 ◽  
Vol 46 (1-4) ◽  
pp. 17-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Radmila Sajkovic

In this text the author reviews the life and work of Zagorka Micic, famous Serbian woman-philosopher, in honour of the 100th anniversary of her birth. She was one of the first students of Edmund Husserl, and her Ph. D. thesis was among the earliest ones in phaenomenology, which was waking in that time. Her cooperation with Husserl has continued for a decade. After the World War II Zagorka Micic worked as a professor of logic and history of philosophy at the University of Skoplje (now FYRM). Stressing her individual qualities, the paper is full of personal memories and reminiscences of mutual encounters.


2018 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Željko Oset

The paper at hand deals with the academic career of Maks Samec (1881-1964) after World War II. Samec lost his habilitation upon the »purge« at the University of Ljubljana in August of 1945, but was offered a second chance as an irreplaceable scientist – he became the founder of the newly established Institute of Chemistry at the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts (SASA). He has earned numerous recognitions and state decorations for his work. At the institute, he strived to apply his academic standards, but was not entirely successful, which was also a consequence of administrative reforms and changes to research policy in the 1950s.


2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 108-155
Author(s):  
Michał Kozłowski

This article is devoted to Stanisław Herbst’s (1907–1973) seminar at the Institute of History at the University of Warsaw, which after World War II was one of the most popular historical seminars. Stanisław Herbst also conducted master and doctoral seminars at the Military Political Academy, thus creating a broad base for the reception of his views. Military historians constituted a large part of Herbst’s students. The discontinuation of the Herbst school was determined by structural issues discussed in this text, the most important of which was the lack of a military history department at the Institute of History at the University of Warsaw.


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