• Home
  • About
  • Contact
  • Write for Us

News and views from Kolkata, India, and around the world

Make money from hosting guests
  • Career
  • City Life
  • Opinion
  • Culture
  • Technology
  • Travel
    • SOUTH AFRICA TRAVEL GUIDE
You are here: Home / Career / A namesake gift

A namesake gift

June 28, 2007 By Partha Bhattacharya Leave a Comment

What is common between Meghnad Saha and Meghnad Desai? I’m afraid there’s no prize for correct answer. For it is so obvious. There is however another common between the two stalwarts. It is the quest for pursuing knowledge.

As per news report in Khaleej Times, Lord Meghnad Desai is so enamored by his namesake that he has chosen Kolkata to set up a liberal arts college that will offer an integrated 4-year B.Phil course.

Dr. Meghnad Saha was an eminent Physicist. In 1949 he established in the city the country’s first-ever institute to study nuclear physics, later christened as Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics. Earlier in 1927 he became Fellow of London’s Royal Society.

Dr. Saha’s eminence can be gauged by the following observation by noted physicist Jayant Narlikar in his book The Scientific Edge (taken from Wikipedia):

“Meghnad Saha’s ionization equation (c. 1920), which opened the door to stellar astrophysics” was one of the top ten achievements of 20th century Indian science [and] could be considered in the Nobel Prize class.”

Lord Meghnad Desai is a Vadodara-born economist of great repute who earned his PhD at age 22 at the University of Pennsylvania having completed masters’ before age 20.

Professor Desai taught for long time at London School of Economics and presently he is Professor Emeritus there. He was conferred life peerage as Baron Desai in 1991 in UK.

As for his newly planned institute of liberal arts, Lord Desai has this to say:

“It will not be another run-of-the mill college aping the IITs or IIMs. I want to introduce a free-standing liberal arts college instead of a straitjacketed science or arts curriculum.”

“Students can take their pick from a host of subjects ranging from physics to anthropology. The idea is to stretch their ability to explore, assimilate, and think independently. That’s what global employers are now looking for.”

The state government is actively looking for land to locate Lord Desai’s institute and it appears possible that the institute will come up at Kalyani where already a new central-government accredited institute of science similar to Bangalore’s IIS is underway.

Filed Under: Career, Commentary, Opinion, People, Science

About the Author

Partha Bhattacharya is a coach and consultant for online course development and web content solutions. He is also the founder of HubSkills.Com.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

  • Facebook
  • Twitter

Recent Posts

  • উপার্জনের জন্য ব্লগ লিখবেন? একদম না!
  • Exercising Storytelling with Cynthia Hellen
  • Start Business at Old Age? You’ll Succeed 3x More than Young Ones!!
  • 2017-19 Is Kolkata’s Historic Opportunity to Become an International Tourist Hub
  • Kolkata’s National Museum I Knew Is Now Lost in the Mists of Time
  • Can you secure your digital life? With luck, you can but only just!
  • 3 Elections This Year Disprove Popular Mandate. Or Is It The New Norm?

Archives

Copyright © 2021 KolkataMusing.Com · Designed with News Pro Theme · Terms of Use