SOME IMPORTANT LETTERS RELATED TO THE RESEARCH
AND PROFESSIONAL CAREER OF ALLADI RAMAKRISHNAN

Alladi Ramakrishnan had a remarkable research and professional career, remarkable in the sense that at each stage, some eminent scientist or high level administrator recognized the significance of Ramakrishnan's research and efforts, and immediately provided the appropriate support that was necessary. In what follows, we have assembled a few important letters and documents related to Professor Ramakrishnan's career and provided background regarding the letters, the person writing these letters, and what the outcome was. These letters and documents pertain to:

I) Ramakrishnan going to the University of Manchester for his PhD (1949-51) under Professor M. S. Bartlett. Recognition of Ramakrishnan's work on product densities by Professors Bartlett and D. G. Kendall (1950-51), including publication of his work in the Proceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical Society.

II) Recognition of Ramakrishnan's work by the great astrophysicist Subrahmanyam Chandrasekar leading to the publication of his work in the Astrophysical Journal starting from 1951.

III) Recognition of Ramakrishnan's work by Nobel Laureate Sir. C. V. Raman leading to the election of Ramakrishnan as a Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences in 1955.

IV) Recognition of Ramakrishnan's work by Nobel Laureate Werner Heisenberg in 1956 leading to the publication of Ramakrishnan's article in the Handbuch der Physik in 1959.

V) Ramakrishnan's letters to Education Minister C. Subramaniam in 1959 inviting him to meet the students of the Theoretical Physics Seminar.

VI) Ramakrishnan's letter to Nobel Laureate Niels Bohr in 1960 thanking Bohr for his visit to Ekamra Nivas and Bohr's reply in which he expresses his appreciation of Ramakrishnan's efforts and invites him to visit the Copenhagen Institute of Physics.

VII) Telegram from Education Minister C. Subramaniam saying that Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was willing to meet Ramakrishnan's group on October 8, 1961.

VIII) Telegram from Nobel Laureate Niels Bohr congratulating Ramakrishnan on the creation of MATSCIENCE.

IX) Letter from Nobel Laureate Dirac in 1971 acknowledging that Ramakrishnan's generalization of the Dirac matrices is quite interesting.

Each part above has a page describing the context and background and links are provided to these letters and documents.

Krishnaswami Alladi

The url of this page is http://www.krishnaswami-alladi.com/old-website/ar-important-letters/index.html.
Created by K. Alladi (alladik@ufl.edu) on Thursday, January 28, 2010.
Last update made Thu Jan 28 23:35:43 EST 2010.


MAIL alladik@ufl.edu