Chandrasekhar: A saga of original contributions

By Harichandan A.A.

BANGALORE, JULY 27. Success is said to come to those who are willing to take risks and tread untrodden paths. Professor Sivaramakrishna Chandrasekhar, Founder-Director of the Centre for Liquid Crystal Research, Bangalore, may be counted among those who have willingly taken such calculated risks. He has a fair measure of success to show for this.

He is credited with the anticipation of the existence of discotic liquid crystals (comprising disc-like molecules as against the rod-like molecules of other liquid crystals known at the time), and later their discovery. The seminal work resulted in a paper published by him in the scientific journal, Pramana, along with Mr. Sadashiva B.K and Mr. Suresh K.A. in 1977.

Recently, he was awarded the Sodruzhestvo's (Liquid Crystalline Society or LCS, under the Russian Academy of Sciences) V.K. Friedericksz medal for the year 2000. Friederickz (1885 - 1944) was considered to be the father of liquid crystals research in Russia. The award, instituted in his memory, is given to two scientists each year. The other scientist for the year 2000 is Mr. A. Sonin.

Professor Chandrasekhar reminisced for The Hindu, about his foray into liquid crystals research, which became a long journey, marked by many original contributions.

Thirty years ago, he decided to quit as Head of the Department of Physics at Manasagangotri, University of Mysore. It was a department he had started and whose growth he had directed for 10 years.

The move from Manasagangotri to the Raman Research Institute (RRI) in 1971 was also, perhaps, symbolic of something more daring that he was contemplating. ``I had decided it was time to break new ground... from researching crystals, I changed to liquid crystals,'' he said. He became Professor and Head of the Liquid Crystal Laboratory at the RRI.

Did he anticipate at that time the deluge of scientific papers on liquid crystals and their applications that was to come a few years down the line? Only he can tell. However, in 1991, reporting on a symposium on liquid crystals at the Massachussets Institute of Technology in the U.S. the journal Liquid Crystals Today quoted from his article "The legacy of Sir Lawrence Bragg: When I was setting up the new department in Mysore, I mentioned this to Bragg (the intention to shift), hoping that he would not be too disappointed that I was wandering off into an unfashionable and long-forgotten field. His response was, in fact, just the opposite, for which I was truly grateful. He started a serious discussion on the subject and I felt jubilant."

In fact, the symposium was in honour of Professor Chandrasekhar, with about 70 participants from different parts of the world `who share with him the quest to understand the mysteries of liquid crystals' the report said.

Research centre

The Centre for Liquid Crystal Research here was inaugurated in March 1995 by President K.R. Narayanan. Primary funding came from the Department of Electronics, now known as the Ministry of Information Technology. The centre has 12 scientists with Ph.D. Currently, it has three Indian and four international patents pending.

An important area of research at the centre currently deals with improving the viewing angle of liquid crystal displays. That is only one possible application. In an article in the journal, Liquid Crystals, in 1996, authors Neville Boden and others say that individual molecular columns in discotic liquid crystals can act as molecular wires that can conduct an electric current. "This property has commercial applications in fast high- resolution light scanning and Xerography and environmental gas sensors in the immediate future, and hybrid computer chips -- enabling electronic communication with molecules -- in the long term," they said.

Back to the professor, the Friederickz Medal is the highest award of the Russian Liquid Crystalline Society. He was chosen for "outstanding scientific work in the field of Physics of Liquid Crystals."

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