Monday, August 31, 2009

Two prodigies at IISc


The first, Tathagat Avatar Tulsi, has just graduated with a PhD in physics at the age of 21. With a thesis that's all of 33 pages, he is also reported to have applied for "the shortest PhD thesis" record in the Limca Book of Records.

The other, Mohammad Ali Aamir, has just joined IISc's integrated PhD program in physics at the age of 15.

5 Comments:

  1. Anonymous said...

    Interesting...

  2. Anonymous said...

    I remember there was a TIFR math thesis some 15+ years back that was 12 pages or so.

    Anybody from TIFR remembers?

  3. gaddeswarup said...

    I vaguely remember that C.P. Ramanujam's thesis around 1967 was rumoured to be around 14 pages, but I am not sure. I remember that he was considering quitting and was persuaded to stay and finish his thesis by K.G. Ramanathan and after the thesis was promoted to Associate Professorship. Somebody still in TIFR like M.S.Raghunathan may be able to confirm.
    I did not have much success asking the Bombay university. Once I wanted to a check a dubious thesis on Algebraic Topology but could not get it from the university.

  4. Anonymous said...

    Getting PhD at 21 is totally awesome though I didn't quite understood how does the length of PhD really matters.

    Congrats and good luck to both these guys.

  5. Anonymous said...

    while this is not to take away what he has achieved at the age of 21, the claim of youngest indian ph.d. seems to be of dubious value if the following wiki entry is true :

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predhiman_Krishan_Kaw