Glittering galaxy

PATHS OF INNOVATORS IN SCIENCE, ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY: Dr.R. Parthasarathy; East-West Books (Madras) Pvt. Ltd., 62-A Ormes Road, Kilpauk, Chennai-600010. Rs. 200.

THE COMPREHENSIVE coverage by Dr. Parthasarathy, of the wide range of disciplines to which the scientists and engineers in this very readable collection belong, must have put him to tremendous effort. But he has made it all very enriching for the readers who should have been looking forward to the issues of The Hindu in which they were published week after week.

In his brief but highly interesting foreword, Dr. R. Chidambaram, Chairman (since retired), Atomic Energy Commission and Secretary, Department of Atomic Energy, takes a look at the galaxy of scientists assembled in this book.

He points out how Rutherford in his time did not know that biology would be moving to centre stage when he said - obviously with a sneer - ``Chemistry is a branch of science and the rest of the sciences is stamp-collecting.'' He also writes about the great odds that some of them had to fight as in the case of Stephen Hawking, crippled by motor neuron disease.

His reference to the ``second rate British professor Aston who attacked the German theoretical physicist, Max Boron'' should recall how Charles Darwin, derided, by the jealous and stupid men of his time was later celebrated as ``The dunce who taught men to think.'' The giant leaps taken by science and technology should make even the most brilliant scientists feel humble since they bear out that the still unknown and the unexplored will continue to beckon and tease them.

Dr. Parthasarathy's coverage extends from Michael Faraday, Heinrich Hertz, James Watt, George Stephenson, Guglielmo Marconi, Hermann Helmhotz, Joseph Fourier and Edmund Halley to C.V. Raman, S. Chandrasekhar, Srinivasa Ramanujan and Charles Darwin to mention only a few. He should have greatly enjoyed giving his readers a rich fare every week as it should have taken him on a fascinating journey to the worlds which the geniuses he had written about had been exploring.

CVG

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