On a long, neatly laid out table, about a dozen people are sitting across from each other facing banana leaves with dollops of delicacies. While most of them are intently listening to someone, hands hovering over their food, a young woman darts a quick look away at the camera.
This isn’t a wedding feast, but a dinner from over six decades ago at a Theoretical Physics Seminar hosted by Alladi Ramakrishnan at his family home. This seminar series sowed the seeds of The Institute of Mathematical Sciences (IMSc), which was established in 1962. Ramakrishnan, its founding Director, meticulously recorded the institute’s growing years, leaving behind a large trove of photographs.
Alladi Ramakrishnan with Niels Bohr at the former’s family home in 1960. (More details)Early years
“Right from the institute's inception, the way he organised information about the institute is really outstanding,” says Dr Paul Pandian, former librarian at the institute. Photo agencies were appointed to take photographs who delivered print versions to the administrative office, which were passed on to the library. Most of these photographs are single copies with notes carrying details of the event attached to the photo or the album. Sometimes, the back of the prints were stamped with the photo agency’s seal.
The audience at the 8th Anniversary Symposium in the Taramani campus against a strikingly open landscape in 1970. (More details)
“Till the eighties, many of the institute's annual symposia were held in Mysore, Bangalore or Ooty as recorded in the annual reports,” says Maruthu Pandian, the current librarian at the institute. IMSc researchers would travel to these meetings and local photographers covered the events. There were also many important visitors to the institute during this time. Nobel laureates and eminent researchers from India and abroad who engaged in discussions with students on campus, governors and state ministers, and former prime ministers and presidents of the country. These events were captured on film giving us glimpses of blackboard discussions, group photos at symposia, dignitaries received, visitors felicitated, formal dinners, cultural events (such as concerts by the Founder Director’s wife Lalitha Ramakrishnan) and people and fashion through the ages.
Participants at a conference on ‘Probability methods, Monte Carlo techniques and applications’ at Hindustan Photo Films, Ooty in 1983. (More details)
Keeping records
“There is a ten-year period from around the mid-eighties to nineties where we don’t have many photographs,” Maruthu says. “Former librarian, KS Santhanagopalan, received photographs from the administrative office, put 20-30 of them together and labeled such collections with relevant information,” he adds.
“When I came to IMSc in 2002, photos were predominantly in print format, and we started getting digital photos only in the early 2010s,” says Paul Pandian. “Until about 2006 or 2007, a handwritten ledger was maintained to enter details of photographs and sequential numbers were given to them,” says former library staff Dr Usha Devi.
Anthony J Leggett (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), Zhores I Alferov (Ioffe Institute, Russian Academy of Science) and ECG Sudarshan during the Albert Einstein Annus Mirabilis Centennial Public Lectures at IMSc in 2007 (More details)
She started keeping a meticulous record of each album that was received, numbering and naming them and entering information about the event into a spreadsheet. These albums were stored away in a cupboard within the library premises. While the library moved during renovation and the addition of a new wing, she ensured that the photographs were kept safe. “The shifting of the collection to the new building saw the efforts of everyone in the library team,” Usha Devi says. “The team of J Balakrishnan, J Janakiraman, J Vimalraj, D Rethinasamy and S Ramakrishnan was of great support.”
Connecting the dots
In 2012, due to some unforeseen circumstances, the photographs got mixed up when they were removed from their albums and were kept together in a single box. Separate from their labelled albums and pouches, the photographs were an anachronous jigsaw puzzle. Despite the will and intention to organize them, a lack of manpower meant that the photographs lay dormant for many years.
This was until a few years ago when it was decided that the photographs be brought to life again. “The issue cropped up when we were thinking of celebrating IMSc’s 60th year. We thought this was the right time to start archiving the photographs so that we don’t face the same situation in our 75th year,” recollects Maruthu. The library staff were faced with a herculean task.
C Subramaniam (left), Alladi Ramakrishnan (third from left), Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M Bhaktavatsalam at the 5th Anniversary Symposium in 1967. (More details)
The library staff converged on a strategy of grouping 10-15 photographs at a time based on the clues within them. People, places, attires, and even polka dots on ties and patterns on tablecloths were breadcrumbs that they followed. Sometimes, the photo agency’s seal with the name of the city or phone number told them where the photograph was taken.
The effort was advised by the librarian Paul Pandian with help from Usha Devi, and all the library members participated. It was grueling work and often monotonous, with hours spent looking through photos with little success. The library staff took turns to work on the project. “At that point in 2021-2022, we luckily had all three project assistants and three trainees on roll,” Maruthu says. "We could spare two to three people exclusively for this project on a rotation basis.”
Abdus Salam (Imperial College London) presenting a lecture at the Theoretical Physics Seminar Series in 1960 (More details). He revisited IMSc two decades later.
“A photograph can have outstanding people in it, but without information, it is like a blank sheet,” says Paul Pandian. Alladi Ramakrishnan’s detailed memoir along with the institute’s archive of annual reports proved to be crucial sources of information. “In 2006, our librarian took the initiative of digitizing a lot of resources in the library including theses and annual reports,” which came in very handy, says Usha Devi. Details of events and people in the photographs were extracted from these and Ramakrishnan’s son Krishnaswami Alladi’s well-curated archive of photos and documents. “Picking out information for every photograph from the annual report was an arduous task,” says Paul Pandian. For photographs from later decades, Usha Devi and her library colleagues J Balakrishnan and J Janakiraman were able to identify many people. The library also approached former institute members for help with names and events.
A map of modern physics by Gunnar Källén, 1966. (More details)Preservation and archival
“After organising the print photographs, we took help from the Roja Muthiah library to preserve them at a very nominal fee,” Maruthu says. Dr G Sundar, an archivist at the library, helped IMSc preserve these photographs and suggested a naming convention. “If not stored properly, photographs stick together. Those from the older periods would have interacted with atmospheric components, especially humidity and oxygen,” explains Sundar. Oxidation of silver leads to a shiny appearance on the surface of old photographs due to the formation of silver oxide. “The photographs also have to be in circulation, otherwise there may be air pockets with their own microclimate,” adds Sundar. “We put them in paper-based albums that are neither acidic nor alkaline, such as polyester or polypropylene ones.”
A photo of Robert E Marshak (University of Rochester) and Leonard I Schiff (Stanford University) at Matscience in 1963 showing signs of damage. (More details)
The library staff meticulously associated metadata with these photographs, such as the name, date and place of the event along with names of people appearing in the photograph. They also archived electronic versions by scanning each print photograph carefully and created an online searchable database using an open-source image archiving software. Digital photographs stored in IMSc’s Ekalavya repository were also integrated into the archive using representative photographs from each event. “After 2012, there was a huge growth in the addition to the photo collection because the library started regularly receiving photos of all the events,” Usha Devi says. Digital photographs from the last ten years have been linked with the associated video hosted on IMSc’s YouTube channel and the meeting website, when available. It has been possible because of the efforts of the IMSc Media team who cover institute events.
With the most challenging aspect of archival behind them, the library is currently updating the database by adding digital photos from recent years. While this work is in progress, the photo gallery is up on the web. Users can search for photographs using various fields, and click on tags such as names and events to reveal related photographs. It is easy to get lost while time-travelling to the past through these photographs.
S Indumathi, G Bhamathi, TK Radha and R Thunga at the Theoretical Physics Seminar in 1960 (More details). In a recent article, TK Radha spoke about her PhD in particle physics from the University of Madras, J Robert Oppenheimer’s invitation to the Institute for Advanced Study, and her later career.
“People will not be around to recollect the history in words,” says Usha Devi. “A photograph can tell you a lot. It can carry information for years and centuries to come,” says Paul Pandian. “To understand history one needs to preserve every bit of it,” Sundar says.
An evolving archive
Maruthu and his colleagues in the library are not resting their feet yet. There are information gaps and possible errors in the metadata of older photographs that need to be addressed. “When we publicise these photographs, former IMSc members may be able to contribute information,” hopes Maruthu. They may also have complementary images in their personal collection, which can be contributed with due attribution. Institutes visited by Alladi Ramakrishnan and other faculty members may have photographs of these visits in their archives, which can also be incorporated.
“This is just the photographs, but we have a lot more material,” Maruthu says. Annual and symposium reports, and doctoral theses since IMSc’s inception are already preserved in the library, which along with faculty notes and documents can enrich the institute's historical collection.
The possibilities for the IMSc archive are endless.
Starting from second from left: G Bhamathi, S Indumathi, McCrea Hazlett (University of Rochester), TK Radha and AP Balachandran at a dinner hosted in Alladi Ramakrishnan’s family home, 1961. (More details)
--
The author thanks Aysha Mahira for sharing her experience of organising photographs and for pointing to many interesting ones, some of which have been featured in this article.
