1981 - Annual Report

Abstract

The Nineteenth Anniversary of the Institute was] celebrated on the 17th January 1981 and a Symposium on 'A Biographical Approach to Modern Physics (Planck to Salam, the Quantum to the Quark)* was organised. The symposium was inaugurated by His Excellency Mr. Sadiq Ali, Governor of Tamil Nadu. The portraits of Julian Schwinger and Emilio Segre were unveiled by Mr. Christopher L. Sholes, Director, US1CA, Madras and the portraits of Sm-Itiro Tomonaga and Hideki Yukawa were unveiled by Mr. Masanarl Ozaki, Consul General of Japan, Madras. The Institute conducted a conference on ‘Particle Interactions and Astrophysics’ at Mysore during 4th to 8th February, 1981. Inaugurating the Conference Professor Alladi Ramakrishnan recalled the introduction of the charm quantum number by Professor Glashow at the Dubna Conference in 1964 and briefly outlined the further developments. About 40 scientists from all over India participated in this conference besides Professor K. Dietz from the University of Bonn, Germany and Professor C. J. Eliezer from La Trobe University, Australia who were at Matscience as visiting professors. Matscience conducted the ‘Third Conference on Number Theory’ at Mysore during 3rd to 6th June 1981. Professor Paul Erdos from Mathematical Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest delivered the inaugural lecture on some current problems of interest in probabilistic number theory. Professors Paul Erdosf K. Ramachandra from T.I.F.R., Bombay and R. P. Bambah from Panjab University, Chandigarh and Dr. Krishnaswamy Alladi from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA were the principal lecturers. About thirty number theorists from all over the country participated in the conference. The proceedings of this conference is to be published by Springer-Verlag, West Germany. The conference on ‘Probability, Stochastic Processes and Applications’ held at the Hindustan Photo Films’ Club House at Ooty during 24th to 27th August 1981 was inaugurated by Professor Alladi Ramakrishnan who explained the deep significance of the frequency interpretation of probability and inverse problems in random processes. About 25 scientists participated in the conference. 12th January 1981 was a significant day for Matscience when Professor Abdus Salam spent an evening at the Institute during his brief visit to India. Welcoming the Nobel Laurete Professor Alladi Ramakrishnan recalled the miraculous circumstances of the birth of Matscience due to the joint interests of Professors Abdus Salam and Niels Bohr on the one hand and Mr. C. Subramaniam and Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru on the other. This year also witnessed the memorable lectures at Matscience of Professor Paul Brdoa, ope of the greatest mathematicians of this century, one of the founders of probabilistic number theory and the prime exponent of graph theory. During the 3rd week of December, Professor Rene Thom one of to-day’s leading mathematicians, the Fields medallist for significant contributions to differential topology and the creator of Catastrophe Theory, gave lectures at Matscience on his work in Catastrophe Theory.

1. Report No. 102 K. Srinivasa Rao: Lectures on the Loreotz Group and Related Topics (1981) 2. Report No. 103 K. Srinivasa Rao & R. Parthasarathy, Eds. Proceedings of the Conference on the Charmed Physics of the Seventies, Mysore, Nov. 25-30, 1979 (1981) 3. Report No. 104 R. Jagannathan, Ed: Proceedings of the Second Conference on Number Theory, Ooty, August 3-7, 1980 (1981) 4. Report No. 105 R. Vasudevan, Ed: Proceedings of the Conference on Mathematics in Economics, Engineering and Life Sciences, Mysore, March 19-22, 1980 (1981)