S. Pancharatnam

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S. Pancharatnam ( Shivaramakrishnan Pancharatnam ; born February 9, 1934 in Calcutta , † May 28, 1969 in Oxford ) was an Indian physicist . He is known for the early introduction of a variant of the Geometric Phase in 1956 in experiments with polarized light.

Life

Pancharatnam studied at the Nagpur University and then went to the Raman Research Institute of CV Raman in Bangalore . Raman was a brother of his mother and a brother of Pancharatnam was already studying with Raman, but for these reasons Pancharatnam actually did not want to study with him. Only a conversation with Raman, who knew nothing about the relatives at the time, led to a change of mind. At Raman he dealt in particular with crystal optics, which led to several publications. In 1961 he went to the newly established University of Mysore as a reader , where Sivaramakrishna Chandrasekhar, with whom he was also related, held the chair of physics. In 1960 he visited the USA and Canada, including a conference on coherence and quantum optics in Rochester. He also attended the second Rochester conference in 1966 and a conference on optical pumping in Warsaw in 1968, where he gave the lecture Theory and experimental observation of modulated birefringence . From 1964 until his death he was a Research Fellow at the University of Oxford (St. Catherine's College and Clarendon Laboratory ) at the George William Series , where he worked, among other things, on experiments on optical pumping . He died at the age of 35 from a lung disease from which he already suffered in India.

Pancharatnam's pioneering role in the introduction of the geometric phase only became known after Michael Berry's more general treatment in 1983. Sometimes the Berry phase (geometric phase) is therefore also named after Pancharatnam. In 1956 Pancharatnam studied the interference of rays of polarized light passing through several crystals. To do this, he had to introduce a definition of the phase of polarized light, which is now named after him.

In 1958 he became a member of the Indian Academy of Sciences .

In 1975 his collected works were published. His contribution to the article on crystal optics in the Handbuch der Physik 1961, written by GN Ramachandran and S. Ramaseshan (his brother), is not included. Pancharatnam did not want to be named as a co-author.

Fonts

  • S. Pancharatnam: Collected Works. Oxford University Press 1975 (preface GW Series).
    • Review: RW Ditchburn: Collected Works of S. Pancharatnam . In: Optica Acta: International Journal of Optics . tape 23 , no. 1 , 1976, p. 84-84 , doi : 10.1080 / 716099374 .

literature

  • Michael Barry: Pancharatnam, Virtuoso of the Poincaré Sphere . In: Current Science . tape 67 , no. 4 , 1994, pp. 220-223 ( PDF ).
  • S. Pancharatnam - Extracts from foreword to the collected works . In: Current Science . tape 67 , no. 4 , 1994, pp. 290–292 ( online - contains a biography).
  • NV Madhusudana: Pancharatnam in Mysore . In: Current Science . tape 67 , no. 4 , August 25, 1994, pp. 259-261 ( PDF ).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ S. Pancharatnam - Extracts from foreword to the collected works . In: Current Science . tape 67 , no. 4 , 1994, pp. 290-292 ( online ).
  2. ^ S. Pancharatnam: Generalized Theory of Interference, and Its Applications. Part I. Coherent Pencils . In: Proceedings of the Indian Academy of Sciences, Section A . tape 44 , 1956, pp. 247-262 (on- line ).
personal data
SURNAME Pancharatnam, S.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Pancharatnam, Shivaramakrishnan
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Indian physicist
DATE OF BIRTH February 9, 1934
PLACE OF BIRTH Calcutta
DATE OF DEATH May 28, 1969
Place of death Oxford