Padmanabhan balarama biography of albert
Epilogue: Pan Narrans
Keywords
Verse
VerseNow twenty years ago,This day we found the thing;With science and with skillWe found; then came the sting—What we with endless labour wonThe thick world scorned;Not worth a word to-day—Not worth remembering.Footnote
Quoted in Malcolm Watson, ‘Ronald Ross, 1857–1932’ Science Progress in the Twentieth Century (1919–1933) 27.107 (January 1933) 377–92 (p. 386).
—From ‘The Anniversary (20th August 1917)’As I opened with a poem, it seems appropriate that I close with one. Written in 1917, 20 years after his discovery, ‘The Anniversary’ voices Ross’s dismay at the lukewarm response to his work. Whilst many congratulated him on his ‘ground-breaking’ intellectual discovery, the practical implementations of sanitary measures for mosquito control were subject to unilateral and intermittent adoption by local governments. As Christian Strother has noted, the ‘inherent localism in health policy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century allowed for a variety of responses to contemporary scientific research on malaria’.Ross advised setting up ‘mosquito brigades’ to exterminate mosquito larvae and eliminate breeding grounds; however, the system was rejected wholesale or after only a short trial in many places. The brigades introduced by Ross to Freetown, Sierra Leone, in 1899, for example, were quickly abandoned once the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine ceased directly supervising them.Conversely, the Government of French West Africa was inspired by the Freetown system to adopt their own brigades, which had lasting success in reducing rates of malaria in the region. Whilst mosquito brigades were implemented at Khartoum, Zanzibar, and the Federated Malay States, they were rejected by 12 district boards and 39 municipal councils in the Madras Presidency in India owing to resistance from local health officials and concerns about cost. Despite success in the Federated Malay States, at Panama, in Fellows and
Young Affiliates
Biodata
Guharay (Ph.D.,1982, University of Nottingham), is currently Advisor Projects and Services with a Mesoamerican Information Services for Sustainable Agriculture, SIMAS. Earlier he served as Program manager Climate Smart Cocoa World Cocoa Foundation (WCF), Scientist Research for Development, International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT); Programme Leader for Integrated Pest Management and Agroforestry, Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center (CATIE), Professor of Plant Protection, National Agricultural University, Nicaragua (UNA) and Research Assistant Professor Biophysics, State University of New York at Buffalo. He is a member of the Latin American Society of Agroecology. He elucidated the biophysical basis of mechanoreception by discovering stretch-activated ion channels. His research helped to scale the biological control of vectors of Malaria in Nicaragua and laid the foundation of ecological management of agroforestry systems in Mesoamerica. He was awarded National Scholarship for Ph.D. studies by Govt. of India in 1978, the Research Scientist of the year by CATIE 2003, and the Coffee personality of Nicaragua by RAMACAFE 2006.
History
The brain child of Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata, a successful businessman and philanthropist, the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) was conceived in the late 1800s. To this end, Tata set up a provisional committee under the leadership of Burjorji Padshah, an educationist, to come up with a blueprint for the proposed university. The committee drafted a plan which went through several iterations before it was finalised. Tata also endowed a substantial part of his personal wealth for this ambitious project.
Unfortunately, Tata died in 1904, well before the Institute came into existence. It was eventually established, through a vesting order passed on 27 May 1909 by the Indian Government, in the southern city of Bengaluru on 371 acres of land donated by the Mysore Durbar.
The Institute which started with just two departments – General and Applied Chemistry and Electrical Technology – today has over 40 departments spread across six divisions: Biological Sciences, Chemical Sciences, Electrical Sciences, Interdisciplinary Research, Mechanical Sciences, and Physical and Mathematical Sciences. It also has a new campus at Challekere in Chitradurga district in Karnataka.
GLIMPSES FROM THE PAST
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Origin
Directors
The Main Building and the First Director
Laying of the Foundation Stone
Memorial to the Founder
IISc’s Contribution to Early Industrialisation
CV Raman and Physics at IISc
Gandhi at IISc
Koenigsberger’s Architectural Legacy
IISc and World War II
Three Mile Stones : Golden Jubilee, Platinum Jubilee and Centenary Year
IISc’s Growth Since Centenary Year
Statue of JN Tata with a model of the Main Building of IISc in his hand. Tata died in 1904 before the Institute came into existence (Courtesy: APC)
A young Maharaja with his mother, the Regent Queen of Mysore State. (Courtesy: APC)
The Indian Institute of Science was founded in 1909 as a result of the joint efforts of A flurry of discussions about plagiarism and predatory publications in recent times has brought the issue of scientific misconduct in India to the fore. The debate has framed scientific misconduct in India as a recent phenomenon. This article questions that framing, which rests on the current tendency to define and police scientific misconduct as a matter of individual behavior. Without ignoring the role of individuals, this article contextualizes their actions by calling attention to the conduct of the institutions, as well as social and political structures that are historically responsible for governing the practice of science in India since the colonial period. Scientific (mis)conduct, in other words, is here examined as a historical phenomenon borne of the interaction between individuals’ aspirations and the systems that impose, measure, and reward scientific output in particular ways. Importantly, historicizing scientific misconduct in this way also underscores scientist-driven initiatives and regulatory interventions that have placed India at the leading edge of reform. With the formal establishment of the Society for Scientific Values in 1986, Indian scientists became the first national community worldwide to monitor research integrity in an institutionally organized way. Keywords: Scientific misconduct, fraud in science, research integrity, the Society for Scientific Values, India A flurry of discussions has ensued in India over practices of plagiarism and predatory publications during the last decade, bringing the issue of scientific misconduct there to the fore. In July 2011 the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai, invited distinguished scientists and administrators to a workshop on “Academic Ethics . . . to discuss various forms of academic misconduct, across disciplines, and look for solutions.” One speaker, biotechnology professor Nandula Raghuram, expressed the common view: “[t]he situation in Indian scienc Abstract
Introduction