Prof. Venki Ramakrishnan on Nobels and Nationalism

In The Telegraph today, Prof. Venki Ramakrishnan (who will visit India soon for a vacation and a lecture tour) says a lot of sensible things:

As for India sharing in the glory of his Nobel Prize (and that of Amartya Sen), he wonders why Indians are relatively unexcited about Ashoke Sen, the theoretical physicist known for his work on string theory and who shared in the $22m Breakthrough Prize in fundamental physics set up by the Russian Yuri Milner.

In Indians not giving as much importance to Sen as they do to Nobel Prize winners, "there is something a little wrong," he remarks. [...]

A question not to ask Venki is: "How should India win more Nobel Prizes?"

"That's actually completely the wrong question because there are so many discoveries that never get a Nobel Prize. It's not a good reason to go into anything," he responds.

"First of all countries don't win them, it's people who win them," he points out. "If a person from a country wins a Nobel Prize it doesn't necessarily mean that that county is doing well overall. It could be just a fluke. It is more important for a country to just nurture scientists and provide them good environments, a decent living and help them to lead a productive life."

When Sir C.V. Raman wanted to learn Russian …

… he turned to Mr. K. Narayan, a graduate from our Department at IISc waiting to join the Bhilai Steel Plant that was being created [the story is from 1958]. Nayantara Narayanan recounts an interesting episode, which plays out over a period of perhaps several months, in which the Nobel Laureate learns Russian to become fluent enough to give his Lenin Peace Prize lecture in that language.

When a 27-year-old metallurgist taught Nobel laureate CV Raman how to speak Russian:

Raman asked Narayan to come to his house every morning before starting work. The house, a bungalow named Panchavati surrounded by a sprawling mango grove in the heart of Malleswaram, was walking distance from where Narayan himself lived. And so the lessons began. Narayan used [the Russian language primer by Nina Potapova] to teach Raman basic Russian.

“He evinced a very keen interest, like a Gurukul student of old. Every day he would do his homework and repeat his lessons back to me,” said Narayan. Even though Raman was 60 years old and Narayan only 27, the older man liked to maintain the teacher-student relationship. As payment for the lessons, Narayan would get to sit down with Raman and his wife for a breakfast of hot coffee and idlis.

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[Cross-posted from our department's website]

Maria Mitchell's Fight for Equal Pay

Becky Ferreirain Motherboard: How a Victorian Astronomer Fought the Gender Pay Gap, and Won:

... [One] of the most interesting fights [Maria] Mitchell [the first professional female astronomer in American history] took up during her life was over an issue that remains incredibly relevant: equal pay for equal work. Given that the gender wage gap still is a pervasive problem in STEM fields, it’s worth revisiting the utterly badass way in which Mitchell approached some 145 years ago.

The FBI File on Paul Erdős

You know you are in for some surreal stuff when the article's headline carries this quote:

"Nothing to indicate the subject had any interest in any matter other than Mathematics.”

And this is followed immediately by this opening line:

Turns out, J. Edgar Hoover's Erdős number is lower than yours.

Adversarial Collaboration

David Shariatmadari's profile of Prof. Daniel Kahneman has lots of fascinating details, including some about his childhood years in Nazi-occupied France. In the section on Kahneman's intellectual contributions, we find this episode which I think is fantastic:

... Then there is the concept of adversarial collaboration, an attempt to do away with pointless academic feuding. Though he doesn’t like to think in terms of leaving a legacy, it’s one thing he says he hopes to be remembered for. In the early 2000s Kahneman sought out a leading opponent of his view that so-called expert judgments were frequently flawed. Gary Klein’s research focused on the ability of professionals such as firefighters to make intuitive but highly skilled judgments in difficult circumstances. “We spent five or six years trying to figure out the boundary, where he’s right, where I am right. And that was a very satisfying experience. We wrote a paper entitled ‘A Failure to Disagree’”.

Fortunately, that paper is available online.

Profiles of Mathematicians

It all started with The Heirs to Ramanujan's Genius: A profile of six Indian mathematicians by Dilip D'Souza in Mint on Sunday (which appeared two weeks ago), featuring Soumya Das (a colleague at IISc), Kaneenika Sinha (blogger and friend from IISER-Pune), U.K. Anandavardhanan (IIT-B), Amritanshu Prasad (IMSc-Chennai), Ritabrata Munshi (TIFR), Nikhil Srivastava (UC-Berkeley).

While I had to wait to get to that article by Dilip, several more landed in my inbox just in the last couple of days. And they are all absolutely fabulous. The first one -- The Singular Mind of Terry Tao -- is a profile of Terence Tao (UCLA) by Gareth Cook in NYTimes.

The world’s most charismatic mathematician: a profile of John Horton Conway (Princeton) by Siobhan Roberts in The Guardian.

Pure to Applied: a nice piece describing the work of Robert Ghrist (UPenn) by Kevin Hartnett in The Pennsylvania Gazette.

And just this morning, I found a great article about four mathematicians (all of them 65+ years of age) "racing to save the Enormous Theorem's proof, all 15,000 pages of it" in the July issue of Scientific American. Unfortunately, the online version is behind a paywall. Grab it if you get a chance!

Links

1. Prem Panicker at Smoke Signals: RIP Jayakanthan.

2. Sriram V. at Madras Heritage and Carnatic Music: A Chola Gift to Chennai.

Vinod Mehta

Vinod Mehta, the founder-editor of Outlook, passed away a few days ago. Many obituaries have noted his courageous journalism, one of its high points being the release of the Radia tapes which, by all accounts, caused his exit from the editorship of the magazine. Many also noted his liberalism. Quite a few noted his staunch defence of secularism. I too remember him, and admire him, for all this and more. But what I admire him most for is his light touch -- exemplified by his Delhi Diary columns, one of which ended with this:

Spare Me the Parsimony
Among the two or three abusive e-mails I receive daily, there is usually some mention of my being born out of wedlock. You Parsi b****** is how they frequently describe me. India is a free country, so everyone is entitled to his/her opinion, but errors of fact must be corrected. Hate mailwallahs please note I am a Punjabi, not a Parsi.

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Here are some links: his recent interview, his month-long Twitter stream (created to promote his second book of autobiographical memoirs, Editor Unplugged), or the obituary penned by Arundhati Roy (almost all of whose non-fiction work appeared first in Mehta's magazine).

"Wittgenstein, Schoolteacher"

That's the title of this charming Paris Review essay about the six-year slice of the philosopher's life spent as a teacher in several Austrian villages.

... [His] later work is full of references to teaching and children. His Philosophical Investigations opens with a long discussion of how children learn language, in order to investigate what the essence of language is. And Wittgenstein is sometimes explicit about the connection; he once said that in considering the meaning of a word, it’s helpful to ask, “How would one set about teaching a child to use this word?” If nothing else, the style of his later work is absolutely teacherly; his post-return writings are so full of thought experiments phrased in the imperative that they can feel like exercises in a textbook or transcripts of a class discussion. “Consider for example the proceedings that we call ‘games’ … What is common to them all?—Don’t say: ‘There must be something common, or they would not be called ‘games’—but look and see whether there is anything common to all … ”

The style reflects Wittgenstein’s new aim, which was pedagogical. [...]

Stephen King on Writing

An article he published in 1986 in The Writer -- Everything You Need to Know About Writing Successfully – in Ten Minutes -- is largely devoted to advice on publishing fiction [hat tip to @AkshatRathi on Twitter].

By sheer coincident, Jessica Lahey's interview of Stephen King on how he teaches writing to high school students also showed up in my linkstream.

If you are into this sort of stuff, both are worth your time. Let me post a couple of excerpts from the first article. Here's how he defines success for a writer:

... For the purposes of the beginning writer, talent may as well be defined as eventual success – publication and money. If you wrote something for which someone sent you a check, if you cashed the check and it didn’t bounce, and if you then paid the light bill with the money, I consider you talented. Now some of you are really hollering. Some of you are calling me one crass money-fixated creep. And some of you are calling me bad names. Are you calling Harold Robbins talented? someone in one of the Great English Departments of America is screeching. V.C. Andrews? Theodore Dreiser? Or what about you, you dyslexic moron?

Nonsense. Worse than nonsense, off the subject. We’re not talking about good or bad here. I’m interested in telling you how to get your stuff published, not in critical judgments of who’s good or bad. As a rule the critical judgments come after the check’s been spent, anyway. I have my own opinions, but most times I keep them to myself. People who are published steadily and are paid for what they are writing may be either saints or trollops, but they are clearly reaching a great many someones who want what they have. Ergo, they are communicating. Ergo, they are talented. The biggest part of writing successfully is being talented, and in the context of marketing, the only bad writer is one who doesn’t get paid.

He ends his piece on a highly quotable quote:

If it’s bad, kill it

When it comes to people, mercy killing is against the law. When it comes to fiction, it is the law.

Links

1. David Pilling: Lunch with FT: Amitav Ghosh.

2. Ram Guha in HT: The suit might not have suited Gandhi and Patel.

3. Nandini Sundar in The Indian Express: Whose National Interest?

Pauli's Inferiority Principle

Esther Inglis-Arkell in io9: The Romance That Led To A Legendary Science Burn:

Pauli was not just hurt by the fact that his marriage had come apart - he jokingly referred to being married only in a "loose way" - but by his bride's choice of man. Deppner had left him for a chemist, of all things, and not even a good one. Pauli loudly complained to his friends, "Had she taken a bullfighter I would have understood - with such a man I could not compete - but a chemist - such an average chemist!" [Bold emphasis added]

I heard this quote in Prof. George Whitesides's talk titled "Reinventing Chemistry" at IISc two years ago; it's nice to get the back story with names (if you are impatient, go to 28:45 in the video).

IPCC Chief R.K. Pachauri Accused of Sexual Harassment

India Today has excerpts from e-mails and SMSs between a colleague and him, and they are sure to make you go, "Holy **** man, what were you thinking?".

When the allegation surfaced (see also this story), Pachauri claimed that his computer and phone were hacked into. But there is a new allegation by another woman who claims that many other women have also been harassed by Pachauri -- a decade ago.

Despite Pachauri's calling the allegation "a cloud which is causing problems personally", this is not going to end well for the IPCC chief and Padma Vibhushan awardee.

IISc Scientist in Forbes-India's 30-Under-30 List

A recent issue of Forbes-India featured a 30-Under-30 list (which sounds very much like the MIT Tech Review's 35-Under-35 list of innovators). It's great to see Prerna Sharma, a colleague in the Department of Physics (and a TIFR alumna), in the list. Also, Sharma is the lone scientist in the list!

Oliver Sacks on His Last Months

He has recently learned that he has "multiple metastases in the liver," the kind of cancer that "cannot be halted." He has a detached, yet touching, article on "how [he plans] to live out the months that remain to me." Here's a section on some of his choices, and the reasons behind them:

I feel a sudden clear focus and perspective. There is no time for anything inessential. I must focus on myself, my work and my friends. I shall no longer look at “NewsHour” every night. I shall no longer pay any attention to politics or arguments about global warming.

This is not indifference but detachment — I still care deeply about the Middle East, about global warming, about growing inequality, but these are no longer my business; they belong to the future. [...]

Game Theorist as Finance Minister

Yanis Varoufakis, finance minister of Greece and a former econ professor specializing in game theory, has a great op-ed on why his field provides a very poor basis for his actions: No Time for Games in Europe:

Game theorists analyze negotiations as if they were split-a-pie games involving selfish players. Because I spent many years during my previous life as an academic researching game theory, some commentators rushed to presume that as Greece’s new finance minister I was busily devising bluffs, stratagems and outside options, struggling to improve upon a weak hand.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

If anything, my game-theory background convinced me that it would be pure folly to think of the current deliberations between Greece and our partners as a bargaining game to be won or lost via bluffs and tactical subterfuge.

The trouble with game theory, as I used to tell my students, is that it takes for granted the players’ motives. In poker or blackjack this assumption is unproblematic. But in the current deliberations between our European partners and Greece’s new government, the whole point is to forge new motives. To fashion a fresh mind-set that transcends national divides, dissolves the creditor-debtor distinction in favor of a pan-European perspective, and places the common European good above petty politics, dogma that proves toxic if universalized, and an us-versus-them mind-set.

Ram Guha on Indian Leaders' Displays of Self-Love

Wow!

In an NDTV opinion piece, he ticks off a whole bunch of India's scientific and intellectual elite -- including C.N.R. Rao, R.A. Mashelkar, Amartya Sen, and Jagdish Bhagwati. If you enjoy people bashing big egos, you will like this one a lot. Guha pulls no punches!

It's not all negative, though. Guha does offer a wonderful positive example: Obaid Siddiqi, the founder of the National Centre for Biological Sciences in Bengaluru. Here's an excerpt from this section:

To be sure, not all Indian scientists are as boastful as Rao or Mashelkar. One of my own intellectual heroes is the late Obaid Siddiqi, who founded theNational Centre for Biological Sciences, arguably India's most high quality scientific laboratory. Siddiqi, who combined intellectual brilliance with personal rectitude, recruited a team of gifted young scientists and then left them the institute to run. He nurtured an atmosphere of egalitarianism in the NCBS, where juniors could fearlessly challenge seniors and where honorifics such as 'Sir', 'Professor'. were rigorously eschewed. Sadly, not many Indian scientists are cut of the same cloth as Obaid Siddiqi. In their youth, C.N.R. Rao and R.A. Mashelkar undoubtedly did first-rate scientific work. But, rather than allow younger people to take over scientific leadership as they themselves grew older, they consolidated their own position and power. Worse still, they encouraged flattery and chamchagiri, as manifested most spectacularly in Rao allowing a circle to be named after him.

Auctioning of Jim Watson's Nobel Medal

There are just too many bizarre twists in this sequence: James Watson auctioned off his 1962 Nobel Medal; the highest bidder, a Russian multi-billionaire, bought it and returned it to Watson. Read more about Watson's peevish motivations here, and about the aftermath of the auction here.

Fallen Hero

This was really sad to read about an academic superstar [see this NYTimes profile] with millions of student fans across the globe:

MIT indefinitely removes online physics lectures and courses by Walter Lewin
"MIT policy on sexual harassment was found to be violated."

MIT is indefinitely removing retired physics faculty member Walter Lewin’s online lectures from MIT OpenCourseWare and online MITx courses from edX, the online learning platform co-founded by MIT, following a determination that Dr. Lewin engaged in online sexual harassment in violation of MIT policies.

MIT’s action comes in response to a complaint it received in October from a woman, who is an online MITx learner, claiming online sexual harassment by Lewin. She provided information about Lewin’s interactions with her, which began when she was a learner in one of his MITx courses, as well as information about interactions between Lewin and other women online learners.

MIT immediately began an investigation, and as a precaution instructed Lewin not to contact any MIT students or online learners, either current or former.

The investigation followed MIT protocol for complaints of sexual harassment. The head of the physics department, Professor Peter Fisher, ensured an objective and timely review, which included a review of detailed materials provided by the complainant and interviews of her and Lewin.

Based on its investigation, MIT has determined that Lewin’s behavior toward the complainant violated the Institute’s policy on sexual harassment.

Google Scholar Turned 10 This Month

Let me start with links to profiles / interviews of Anurag Acharya, the IIT-KGP and Carnegie Mellon alum who co-created this wonderful service along with Alex Verstak. First up, an interview at the biggest scholarly venue of them all: Nature, where Richard Van Noorden interviews him: Google Scholar pioneer on search engine’s future.

Where did the idea for Google Scholar come from?

I came to Google in 2000, as a year off from my academic job at the University of California, Santa Barbara. It was pretty clear that I was unlikely to have a larger impact [in academia] than at Google — making it possible for people everywhere to be able to find information. So I gave up on academia and ran Google’s web-indexing team for four years. It was a very hectic time, and basically, I burnt out.

Alex Verstak and I decided to take a six-month sabbatical to try to make finding scholarly articles easier and faster. The idea wasn’t to produce Google Scholar, it was to improve our ranking of scholarly documents in web search. But the problem with trying to do that is figuring out the intent of the searcher. Do they want scholarly results or are they a layperson? We said, “Suppose you didn’t have to solve that hard a problem; suppose you knew the searcher had a scholarly intent.” We built an internal prototype, and people said: “Hey, this is good by itself. You don’t have to solve another problem — let’s go!” Then Scholar clearly seemed to be very useful and very important, so I ended up staying with it.

The second is a nice profile that I saw on Medium: Making the world’s problem solvers 10% more efficient [the URL text is even better: "the gentleman who made scholar"] by Steven Levy. Here's an excerpt from near the end, where Anurag is asked about his plans, now that Scholar has entered a mature phase:

Acharya is now 50. He’s excited about adding new features to Scholar — improving the “alerts” function and other forms that help users discover information important to them that they might not know is out there. Would he want to continue working on Scholar for another ten years? “One always believes there are other opportunities, but the problem is how to pursue them when you are in a place you like and you have been doing really well. I can do problems that seem very interesting me — but the biggest impact I can possible make is helping people who are solving the world’s problems to be more efficient. If I can make the world’s researchers ten percent more efficient, consider the cumulative impact of that. So if I ended up spending the next ten years going this, I think I would be extremely happy.”

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Anurag's Scholar profile is here. And the Google Scholar blog has been running a series of posts to mark its 10th anniversary: Start from Helping Researchers See Farther Faster, and look for newer posts.