AMUNDSEN’S POLAR CONQUEST

The name is Amundsen. Roald Amundsen. He was a Norwegian, in its true sense, with innate epithet of exploring the sea, deeply reclining in his inner soul. He wanted to be the first man standing at the 900 S latitude, literally the south Pole, and he did it, beating the much celebrated British  rival- Robert Falcon Scott heading to the same crease. Even in the midst of howling  blizzards and thermometers reading fourties below zero, it was a moment of excitement when he held the Norwegian Flag in his Frost-bitten hands securing the pride of his nation, in that faraway land. It was 14 December 1911 when Amundsen achieved this, putting great shame to the British Empire by defeating their imperialistic naval explorer- Captain Scott. The British team could reach there only on 17January 1912 only to find that Amundsen had preceded them by 33 days. More humiliating was the death of all the team, including Scott, starving and dying in bad weather. It was a great shame, rather than a matter of sorrow to the English world which they avenged through demoralizing and defaming Amundsen.Only after the collapse of the British Empire, the iron-curtain over Amundsen’s achievement could fall apart, revealing him to be an unsung hero deserving an empathy. Sadly, it was so late that it came after the death of Amundsen who led  a painful life troubled  by many falsified accusations. Beyond all these, here comes that hero once again, marking the 100th  anniversary of  “man on South Pole”, the UNESCO is celebrating it as part of its scheduled list of anniversaries for the year 2011. The Norwegian government has also declared 2011 as “Amundsen Year” as an honour to their great national hero.

Born Voyager    
Amundsen was born to a family of merchant sea captains and shipowners, in Christinia near Oslo , Norway on july 16, 1872. Even from childhood, he wanted to become an explorer of the high seas, fascinated by the adventures of John Franklin. While on his teens, he insisted on sleeping with the windows open, even during winter time, which he claimed for conditioning himself to the climate of the Poles. No wonder, he would later become the first man to reach both the North and South Pole, but his mother couldn’t imagine him to be a maritime traveler. She wanted Amundsen to be a doctor and upon her words, he pursued the study of medicine at an university there. When he was 21, his mother died leaving Amundsen to his own way where there was no other choice, than becoming an explorer. Franklin returned to his dreams once again, this time with the map of the “Northwest Passage” upon charting of which he disappeared during his historic mission in 1849. That was how the word “Northwest Passage” catched his mind, which he traversed in 1903. Moreover it gave him great confidence in tackling Arctic hardships and gathering survival skills. He learned much from the local Netsilik people, about how to use sled dogs, wearing animal skin to sustain body heat and how to remain healthy with the minimum amount of available food. And probably, he might have also learned how much it is important to leave an official acknowledgement always: he send a message to the new king of Norway, Haakon VII, stating what he has done as “a great achievement for Norway”

The Secret Plan
Amundsen wanted to be the first in either of the Poles, but both the plans now seemed useless. Since Peary had already done it, there was no scope in returning to the North Pole, but he found something left to be done in the South Pole. Moreover, he heard that Scott was preparing for a South Pole conquering expedition. Amundsen saw no reason to concede the South Pole to him, but he didn’t reveal his plan. Upon being asked about his future plan publically, he always spoke about the prospects of  going to the  North Pole. In mind, however, he was sure that though Shackleton had done something in the South, “ a little corner remained” there for him. With the life-learned understanding of the climate of the Antarctic, he prepared everything  in advance, catering their minute details. He was fortunate to get an expert to guide – Fridtjof  Nansen, who had a good command over polar exploration technique. Nansen had made an attempt to reach the North Pole, but failed due to the general drifting pattern of the polar ice. He had also made an attempt, though turned unsuccessful, to reach the South Pole by walking. So, the lessons he could impart were priceless, as Amundsen felt. The main attraction was the ship used by Nansen in his Arctic exploration called  ‘Fram’  , it proved to be the best in fighting the harshest attributes of the polar climate. Though the ship was under Nansen’s command, it was the property of the Norwegian government. And, if the government would fund Amundsen’s expedition, the ship would remain with him. Without much awaiting, the fund was granted, accompanied by ‘Fram’ as a personal gift from Nansen.

The Journey
Amundsen’s plan was to leave Oslo in August, 1910 sailing to Maderia in Atlantic and from there directly to the Rose Sea in Antarctica. He thought of making his base camp nearer to the Rose Ice shelf which could be reached through the Bay of Whales, the southernmost point to which a ship could penetrate. Amundsen’s team left Norway on August 9, eight weeks after Scott’s Terra Nova Expedition departed Cardiff. On board there were 97 dogs in Amundsen’s ship where as Scott’s Terra Nova carried 65 men, 19 Siberian Ponies and 3 motorized-sledges. With Amundsen , there were only 19 men  including the dog -team drivers. A month later, on September 6, Amundsen’s ship Fram reached Maderia. Water and food were taken on board and the crew enjoyed some free time ashore for three days. On the evening of the 9th, Amundsen called an urgent meeting on the main deck. When they came they saw Amundsen standing next to the map of Antarctica pinned to the mainmast. Amundsen raised his voice and said: “Gentlemen, my intention is to sail southwards, land a party on Antarctica and try to reach the South Pole. Anybody who wants to leave may depart now, I will be booking their traveling tickets home”. Most of the crew stood there with their mouth agape, but none left. Then Amundsen asked his brother Leon to write a telegraphic message to Scott which read like this: “ BEG TO INFORM YOU FRAM PROCEEDING ANTARCTIC – AMU NDSEN”.

The Race Begins
On April 21, the sun sank over Framheim and the long “winter night”  began which was to last for the next four months. There was much to be done before it would rise again on 24 August. By 8 September, there was a slight improvement and Amundsen felt he could delay no longer though the temperatures still remained  nearer to -270 C. Leaving one to guard the base, the eight-men team headed towards the Pole. There were 86 dogs and plenty of food. They covered 31 miles over the next three days, Amundsen himself  saying it a “good start” but the morning of 11th was stuck in frigid temperature once again. By the evening, decision was made to race back to Framheim, unloading the sledges at a depot on the way. The return journey was more worse than expected. Two members of the team had their heels frostbitten. Even the dogs were suffering from cold and two of them froze to death. After returning to Framheim, by next morning, Amundsen  made a slight  change in his plan. He said that only Five men will be going to the Pole, while a second party will explore the King Edward VII Land. The Pole exploring party led by Amundsen was accompanied by Olav Olavson Bjaaland, Hilmer Hanssen, Sverre H. Hassel and Oscar Wisting. 19 October became the date of the second start, while all had taken enough rest and recovered from the frost-bites. Each of the five members were in charge of a sledge pulled by a team of  thirteen dogs. Their path across the Rose Ice Shelf proved easy and on 11 November, the Queen Maud Mountains came into view. The weather was good and the temperature never dropped below -34 C.

The Winners Point
On 8 December , the Polar party passed Shackleton’s record of the “farthest South Point”. They put the Norwegian flag on the top of the leading sledge. Hilmer Hanssen was driving the lead sledge and he asked Amundsen to walk in front. He told Amundsen that “dogs run better with someone infront of them”. Thus they ensured Amundsen to be the first man to cross the South Pole. At 3:00 pm, on Friday, December 14, there was a loud cry of “Halt!” from one of the fellow travelers. The sledge-meter showed the latitude to be 900S ! Yes, South Pole ! They achieved the goal. Then symbolic of their unity, the five men together grasped the Norwegian flag and planted it firmly there. Within the period of their three day’s stay there, they also made a small tent and gave it the name – the ‘Polheim’ meaning “Home on the Pole”. Inside it they left two letters, one for Scott and the other for King Haakon VII. In the letter to Scott, he was asked to deliver the other letter to the Norwegian King—in case anything happen to Amundsen’s team. On 18 December they began their return journey and reached Framheim on January 25, 1912. Amundsen Publically announced his success on March 7, 1912, when he arrived at Hobart, Australia. “Everything went like a dance”, this was what he said while referring to his race to the South Pole. And in his later life also he carried out many challenges including a daring expedition to the North Pole. He did it by flying an air-ship ‘Norge’  over  it in 1926. The great Norwegian hero’s death was also in the midst of an adventure- he just disappeared while flying a rescue mission over the Barents  Sea on 18 June 1928.  It is believed that his plane crashed and he died.  But his  body was never  found.

ARDASEER CURSETJEE:THE FIRST INDIAN FELLOW OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY

A Midsummer Night's Dream was a fantasy of William Shakespeare depicting a `supernatural night' full of fairies and facetious amusement, but for the pedestrians and peddlers of (old) Bombay, the night of 10 March 1834 was somewhat more alluring, leaseholding their memory forever.  What they saw was literally the 'garden of paradise' and a mansion, all lit in coloured lights-both beyond the imaginative domains of a maudlin Indian of nineteenth century. Some noble elites knew it to be the house of Wadia family, the famous ship-builders and architects, but only a few bothered to know who lived there in that exuberant way.  Nor did they knew that the Governor of Bombay was visiting that house on that day to see what the young gentleman there was doing-frankly it was the first incident of gas-lighting in the city of Bombay.  Thus that place, Mazagaon was entering into the scientific history of India which soon became the "techno-valley" of British India witnessing many freshly served technological innovations.  The Mazagaon people saw the machine that stitches by itself - the sewing machine- within a few years it was patented by Elias Howe in 1846.  They were also spared from sitting rather motionless before the artist for hours enabling him to sketch a portrait, they could easily get it through the new technique of photography - another marvel the modern science had just captured. It was really a sort of `Mazagaon Days' that followed when they felt it was not magic but the trick of `electroplating' that can turn a copper plate into a silvery one.  The children merried around the fountain that was placed in the public park working under the power of a steam-engine and a machine that carried water from rivers to their barren lands.  Slowly they became familiar with the name of that wizard who was eager to present every thing new to his country and countrymen - Ardaseer Cursetjee (Wadia). My dear reader, now it will not be a surprise, if I introduce him as the first Indian fellow of the Royal Society of London, the position he gained at the age of 33, in 1841, much before Ramanujan, J.C. Bose or C.V. Raman.  Rather less emphatically, 2011 marks 170th anniversary of this achievement made by this young architect of younger India.


A BORN SHIP-BUILDER IN TIME

Cursetjee was a scion of the Wadia family, descendent of Lowji Nusservanji who was brought from Surat dockyard by the British to build a new dock in Bombay.  It happened in 1736 and for the next hundred and fifty years the post of "Master (Ship) Builder" remained with the Wadia family.  The commercial ships of the British East India Company were going on their full steam of profitability and the spreading trade increased demand for more big and sturdy ships. However, in 1772, the East India Company was forbidden from building any new ship in England due to scarcity of timber and illegal increase of tonnage.  But, the company could build them using dockyards in its colonies elsewhere.  This turned to be a fortune for the shipbuilders of Bombay who experimented on Indian Teak-wood replacing the Oak, a random choice that quickly evolved into a better alternative.  Moreover, the workmanship of Bombay dockyard was found to be excellent and less expensive compared to those all over the Europe.  The Bombay dockyard got continuous contracts to build ships for the Company, to the Royal Navy and Emperors of the Middle East bringing great prestige to the Wadia, family. The HMS Cornwallis launched by the Wadia masters was the main battle-ship in the British-American War of 1812 and later the Flag-ship of British Fleet in China during the `Opium Wars.'  The HMS Trincomalee, another well-equipped warship from the Bombay dockyard served the British well during the Crimean War (1852-1857) and was in service for more than hundred years. In the meantime, a technological revolution was sweeping through the dockyards all over the world, which the Wadias failed to accomplish or address properly.  The Steam Engine Technology offered safe travel through the canals and along rocky coasts with more speed and little wreckage.  The Wadias couldn't build steam ships and so their long standing reputation as Master builders was vanishing.It was during that time of creeping defamation, Ardaseer Cursetjee spent his childhood in the Wadia mansion at Mazagoan.  He was born on 6th October 1808 and the years that followed were a period of political turmoil too.  Though the trading monopoly of the East India Company was lost in 1813, the last opposition to British Super Power was lost as the Marathas were mercilessly crushed in 1818. It should be noted that the Marathas were equally powerful on sea but evidently they were not aware of the novel techno-powers of the British Navy.  

The British had learned steam-technology from the Americans early in the 1800s, when the American engineer Robert Fulton made the first inland steam-boat and John Cox Stevens, another American taking it to the sea.  On the English side, steam navigation was started in 1812 through the efforts of Henry Ball building a steam-ship by name Comet and the British had their first sea-going steamer Rob Roy in 1815, a 30 Horse Power ship, making commercial trips between Glasgow and Belfast. The enthusiasm created by it was reflected in the commissioning of the first steamer into British Navy, readily in the year 1819.  But for the Emperors of India (the remaining folk, I mean!), a steam-ship was none other than an expensive toy.  Ghazi Haiderud-Din, the Nawab of Oudh bought a steamship that can speed up 7-8 miles per hour, not as a war-ship, but as a token of his   monumental money-power !  The Wadias were trying on steam ships but to their shame, the Nawab bought it from the Culcutta-dockyard. When the first Anglo-Burmese War broke out in 1824, British the government purchased another steamer from Culcutta-dockyard, named Diana for a sum of Rs.80000.  The Bombay-dockyard was thus embodying a financial tarnishing also and at that time young Cursetjee was there in the Bombay dockyard where he joined to help his father in 1822, at the age of 14.It was so natural that Cursetjee was more interested in the design and construction of steam-engines and steamers, an aspiration be maintained right from the very first days of his formal training in the Bombay-dockyard.  After mastering the basics of ship building there he was put in charge of the supplementary shipyard at Mazagaon in 1828. For his great fortune, in the following year, a pair of 80 Horse Power engines were brought from London to Bombay for fitting into a ship built by the Wadias there.  This gave Cursetjee the much awaited opportunity to study a steam-engine in its minute details and his astute observations were so intense that he could even make working a replica of it!  The ship finally came out with the name High Lindsay, as an honour to the Company's chairman. The authorities were happy about the novel builder's fascinations towards steam engines and they transferred him to the charge of Captain F. McGillvray who was the Mint engineer of Bombay-dockyard.  The guidance soon resulted in a miraculous invention by himself - he constructed a pumping machine which could work using steam power.  He placed that in front of his house, getting a fountain operated by it.  This he did as mere sport, but historically it was the first steam-driven pumping machine in India! 

His father, Rustmojee was the most impressed by it and he agreed to purchase a steam-engine from England as a gift for Cursejee.  It was a 10 Horse Power engine that came which Cursetjee got fitted into a vessel that he named Indus To his great satisfaction, Indus proved to be one of the best ocean-steamers and it was purchased by the British government.  Thus the Wadias were once again on to the thorne of the master ship-builders.


THE EMPIRE'S SHOW-BOY

To the British, Cursetjee was a good example of the most desirable outcome of English Education, an icon of how much extend western education can uplift an Indian native.  So, they did everything possible to make him popular through their kindful patronage and official hegemony across the world.  In October 1833, the Superintendent of the Marine Captain John Crawford recommended him as the Assistant Builder at Mazagaon. For Cursetjee, however these patronizing attitudes turned out to be true reflections of his own attitude towards his fellow - workmen.  He used the same words and idioms used by the company referring to him, while writing letters to the company about the natives under him.  When the Elphinstone Institution was started, Cursetjee was invited to teach `Practical Mechanics' as there was none with that much practical experience.  In 1837, another recognition came-he was elected as the non-resident member of the Royal Asiatic Society of England.  But it seems Cursetjee never wanted to be an armchair academician or architect, his ambition was to "perfect himself, as much as possible, in the construction and repair of marine steam engines and instructing his countrymen in that useful art."  

So, he wrote a letter to the government seeking permission to spend a year in England which was sanctioned in 1838 with a passage money of Rs.600 to travel by the Government Steamer - S.S. Berenice.  He couldn't travel that year due to sudden illness and so began the journey on 13th September 1839 now paying Rs.1000 from his own pocket.  While in England, he was introduced to the Chairman and Secretary of the East India Company and to many eminent personalities.  He was an invited guest to the marriage of Queen Victoria on 10th February 1840 in London and was officially presented to the Queen at a Levee on 1st July 1840.

TO THE ROYAL SOCIETY

On 24th March 1840, Cursetjee was officially elected as an Associate of the Institution of Civil Engineers in London whose meetings were attended by him during his stay in England.  There he could address the engineers on the engines of the steam-tug Alice.  He also discussed on the drawing of engines on board the steam-boat Staadt Frankfort. These actions gained him much appreciation and remained one of the reasons to obtain a testimonial from James Walker, the President of the Institution of Civil Engineers so as to nominate him to the Royal society.By the time, the post of 'chief Engineer and Inspector of Machinery' at the steamer factory, Bombay was announced to which Cursetjee applied with all the favourable testimonials available.  His last request to the company was to grant him permission to take 'a few diagrams of steam engines and a few small tools' with him which was granted. He left England in November 1840 and reached Bombay by the beginning of 1841 and joining the new job on April of the same year.  

In 27 May 1841, he was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society and in the documents of it he was classified as "a distinguished engineer" and "one who is attached to science, and anxious to promote its progress".  In September 1851, Cursetjee made another trip to England and even during this time his great hobby of introducing novelties to his homeland continued.  He also visited America and selected various wood-cutting machines for sending to Bombay.  He returned to Bombay in 1852 and retired on 1st August 1857.


CURSETJEE'S CERTIFICATE OF NOMINATION TO THE ROYAL SOCIETY

Ardaseer Cursetjee Esquire Ship Builder of Bombay lately in England having undertaken the journey to this country at his own expense in order to prepare himself in the knowledge of the Steam Engine as applicable to Navigation and to acquaint himself with the arts and manufactures of Europe with the view of improving his own country and his countrymen, a Gentleman well versed in the theory and practice of Naval Architecture and devoted to scientific pursuits, having introduced Lighting by Gas into Bombay where he perfected a small Gas establishment aided exclusively by Native workmen; having also at his own charge built a Vessel of sixty Tons to which he adapted a Steam Engine sent out from this country, and manufactured and fitted every other part of the Machinery and navigated the vessel entirely with native workmen and Engine men, chiefly instructed and trained by himself; and having otherwise promoted Science and the useful arts in his own country to which he has just returned, having while in England obtained the appointment of principal Inspector of Steam Machinery to the East India Company being desirous of becoming a fellow of the Royal Society ..... And we beg to recommend him from his peculiar situation, and lie proofs he has given of his desire to extend natural knowledge in India.  Dated this twenty seventh day of March 1841.    

THE CLAN OF CURSETJEE      

Cursetjee was in habit of recording everything that happened in his everyday life and the memoirs of his journey and stay in England were publised in 1840 under the title - Diary of an Overland Journey from Bombay to England and of a Year's Residence in Great Britain, London.  The diary holds some interesting anecdotal records revealing the very traditional side of him.  Since the Parsis were ordained to take food cooked by Parsis only, Cursetjee took along servant s from his community, where ever he went.   

Once he refused to talk to a Parsi young man in London, who was not following the custom of wearing a 'cap'.  And he found the London streets to be untidy  compared to those of Bombay (In those times)!  Cursetjee was a Parsi (literally the Persians) belonging to the Zarathustra heritage.  They fled from their homeland in the 8th century AD, coming to the west coast of India as refugees.  

During the period of colonization, they were good friends of Portuguese and they helped them to fortify Bombay against the British in 1665. But later Bombay changed hands and the island of the naval fortress became the central place from which the British set out to build their Empire.  The Paris were in Surat where the British East India Company was first established.  The British heard about Lovji Nusserwanji Wadia from the traders and brought him to build a new dockyard in Bombay in 1736.   

CURSETJEE IN RECORDS

The complete life-sketch of Ardaseer Cursetjee can be found in the book written by R. A. Wadia, published in 1955, under the name The Bombay Dockyard and the Wadia Master-Builders.  The book has got a second edition in 1957 and a second edition in 1983.  Page 340 of the book quotes a statement made by Prof. A. V. Hill, secretary of the Royal Society of London, announcing Cursetjee's selection as FRS, being the great distinction achieved by an Indian.  This was when Prof. Hill held a special meeting of the Royal Society at the 31st session of Indian science congress at Delhi on 3rd January 1944 where he obtained the signatures of some of the fellows of the Royal Society.  This is recorded in the proceedings of the 31st Indian Science Congress.   

NO GARLANDS FROM OWN COUNTRY

In the Bombay Steamer Factory, Cursetjee was the first Indian to be placed over one hundred European engineers and Indian workers but he showed the same kindness to everybody irrespective of their colour and creed.  However, it doesn't mean that his path was filled with roses.  The Bombay Times, the native daily was one among the many which criticized his appointment.  It wrote: "We doubt the competency of a native, however able or educated to take charge of such an establishment as the Bombay Steamer Factory with a body of Englishmen to be directed, superintended and controlled......"  
Cursetjee didn't make any comment to this but tried to augment his workforce through rigorous training.  He remained a favourite for all those placed under him and above him, showering the same natural kindness to all of them.  But for a majority contemporaries, it was too hard to be impressed by his FRS-recognition.  Many Couldn't assimilate his colonial connections too.  This might have inflicted his mind and that may be one among reasons that prompted him to leave India and settle down at Richmond, during his retirement life.  
He died there, at the age of 69, on November 16, 1877, without any national honours.  Historians also were unkind to Cursejee.  Even in the two volume History of Parsis published in 1884 by D. F. Karaka, Cursetjee's name was omitted.  There were 17 pages describing the Wadia Family as ship-builders but not even a singly line about Cursetjee.   Even the commemorative stamp issued by the Indian Postal Service in 1969 could only be a consolation, belate and insolent.

INDIAN FELLOWS TO THE ROYAL SOCIETY      

1.    1841    Cursetjee, Ardaseer: Shipbuilder and Engineer      

2.    1918    Ramanujan, Srinivasa: Mathematician       

3.    1920    Bose, Sir Jagadis Chunder: Biophysical       

4.    1924    Raman, CV (withdrawn 4 April 1968):Physicist      

5.    1927    Saha, Meghnad:Physicist      

6.    1936    Sahni, Birbal:Palaebotanist      

7.    1940    Krishnan, Sir Kariamanikkam (Srinivasa):Physicist       

8.    1941    Bhabha, Homi Jahangir:Physicist      

9.    1943    Bhatnagar, Sir Shanti Swarup: Astrophysicist      

10.  1944    Chandrasekhar, Subrahmanya: Astrophysicist      

11.  1945    Mehalanobis, Prasanta Chander: Statistician      

12.  1957    Wadia, Darashaw Nosherwan: Geologist      

13.  1958    Bose, Satyendranath: Statistician      

14.  1958    Mitra, Sisir Kumar: Upper atmosphere  Physicist      

15.  1960    Seshadri, Tiruvenkata Rajendra: Chemist      

16.  1965    Maheshwari, Panchanan: Botanist      

17.  1967    Rao, Calyampudi Radhakrishna: Statistician      

18.  1970    Menon, MG Kumar: Physicist      

19.  1972    Pal, Benjamin Peary: Agriculturist      

20.  1973    Harish-Chandra: Mathematician      

21.  1973    Swaminathan, Mokombu S: Agriculturist       

22.  1977    Ramachandran, GN: Biophysicist       

23.  1979    Lal, Devendra: Physicist      

24.  1981    Paintal, Autar Singh:Physiologist      

25.  1982    Rao, CNR: Chemist      

26.  1983    Chandrasekhar, S :Crystallographer      

27.  1984    Siddiqui, Obaid: Molecular Biologist      

28.  1986   Ramalingswamy, Vulimiri:Medical Scientist      

29.  1987    Gopalan, Coluthar:Nutritionist      

30.  1988    Mitra, Ashesh Prasad :lonospheric scientist      

31.  1988    Seshadri, Conjeevaram:Mathematician      

32.  1990    Sharma Man Mohan:Chemical Engineer      

33.  1991    Swarup, govind:Radio Astronomer      

34.  1992    Narasimha, Roddam:Fluid Mechanicist /Aeronautist      

35.  1995    Gurdev Sing Khush:Rice breeder      

36.  1998    Mashelkar, Raghunath Anant: Polymer Engineer      

37.  1998    Sen, Ashoke:Physicist      

38.  2000    Raghunathan, MS:Mathematician      

39.  2000    Ramakrishnan, TV: Physicist    

References

Kochhar, Rajesh K. (1993), Ardaseer Cursetjee (1808-1877), the First Indian Fellow of the Royal Society of London.  47 (1): 33-47.

Kochhar, Rajesh K. (2001), Indian Fellows of the Royal Society, London (1841-2000).  Current science 80 (6): 721-722.

50th ANNIVERSARY OF THE FIRST MAN IN SPACE

                                                      
Anna Akimovna Takhtarov and her granddaughter Rita were alone on the freshly plowed field in the village of Smelovka, then part of the Soviet Union.  Nothing special was there for them on that day, it was 12^th April 1960 and they were engaged in their collective farm in the serene air of inland beauty, but only a cow grazing nearby adding to its inlay of peasantry.  It was about quarter to 11 in the morning, the Sun rather reluctantly blazing its intaglios on the field.  Suddenly they heard a loud noise from a distance to make them alert though not rendering any idea of what had happened.  Anna was again to return to her work when Rita pulled her hand in bewilderment, pointing to the sky.  A man like creature with his head and body covered in white apparel was seen coming down, in flying colours of wind-blow parachute.  Rita was thinking of her first encounter with an ET but Anna was urging to leave that place, when the downfalling creature removed its head-cover and greeted in Russian:  "Hey, Don't run away! I am one among us !"  As they were stuck and startled by it, a tractor was seen crossing the field followed by a group of running soldiers.  The man from the tractor introduced himself as Major Akhmed Gasiyer and said: Dobraye ootro (Good Morning).  This is Yuri Gagarin, our comrade and the first man in space.  You are the first to witness him landing from his mission.  The nation will be proud of you!" That moment of glory was not only for them, but for the whole world because he was first visitor from Earth to the "other world" which he saw with a beating heart!  And entering a new word to the dictionary of the world – a “cosmonaut!” This year in 2011, the world of Space Exploration is celebrating the 50^th anniversary of this still yet unparalleled achievement of mankind.

            Gagarin's leap above the Earth was a great blow to the American nationalism which was already an icon of "money-feeder" for an average American citizen following the Soviet success on Sputnik-the first man-made object launched to space.  It also helped USSR to create the imagery of the most advanced and progressive nation in the world.  Politically it gave the communist nation more crimson while white house was literally bleached to white.  It was the time of strengthening ideological pressure from the Cold War, demanding a divide among the world countries to join on either side.  For the Soviet side, it was also advantageous as a propaganda serving to "spiritually" unite all strata of their own Republics under the iconic leadership of Soviet national programme outliving its racial and religious diversity.  Nikita Khrushchev and his successors tried to make Gagarin a "Soviet icon" of a "comrade cosmonaut" cleverly tieing it to the social culture they were struggling to impose.  At the central committee of the Soviet Communist Party when the anti-religious propaganda was discussed, Khrushchev rather inadvertently mentioned "Gagarin flew into space, but he didn't see any god there!"  The imperious influence of that was so great that some western media even implied those words to Gagarin though the verbatim record of his conversations during space flight couldn't support the claim.  However, since everything relating to Gagarin's flight remained under the top-most military secret bunkers, not until recent any sort of disproving was impossible. 

FARM BOY FROM MOSCOW

Gagarin was born on 9^th March 1934 in a village called Klushino, 100 miles west of Moscow in the Smolensk region of Russia.  His Father Alexei Ivanovich was a farmer working in a collective farm.  Anna Timofeyana, his mother was a milkmaid.  Gagarin was the third of four children, Velentin and Boris, the brothers and Zoya, the sister During the Second World War, German army occupied his village, throwing his family out of their home and abducted his brother and sister for slavery in Nazi camps.  Gagarin helped his parents to dig a dugout and they lived there until the war was over.  But these struggles captured much of his time and he was very poorly educated.  Only after the war he could become a regular school-going boy and with the help of two volunteer teachers he managed to give it a 'dolphin-dive'.  He dreamt of becoming  a fighter-pilot even from his childhood when he saw a Russian Fighter Plane crash-landing in a farm-field near his home.  It was with bullet-ridden wings, just returning from the battlefiled.  The pilots who emerged from the plane made an elegant appearance, quite impressive enough in their uniform laden with medals and other adornments.  Moreover one among  his teachers at school was an ex-airforce pilot who became a great inspiration for young Gagarin.  The teacher also helped him to seek the right qualifications leading to the Pilot-training academy, opting the four-year study at the technical High School in Saratov.  While there, he was offered a chance to join the "Flying Club" at school, his dream becoming true.  He learned to fly a light aircraft, taking his first solo flight in 1955.  He seemed to have an innate ability in handling an aeroplane and a special skill to make smooth landings.  He also learned parachuting there but his instructor Dmitry Pavlovich Martyanov remembers him clinging to the door of the plane, out of fear, during his first jump.  "Dont dither Yuri! The girls are watching" – he had to say to make Gagarin finally jump with his eyes closed!

            Dmitry Martyanov was very found of Gagarin and he advised Yuri to join the Military Aviation School at Orenburg.  There his training was to Fly MiG-15 planes.   In 1957 Gagarin graduated with top honours from there and that day was also auspicious in being his wedding day, marrying Valentina Ivanovna Goryacheva whom he met while in Orenburg. Gagarin's exceptional aviation skills made him the fighter pilot at the Aratic Circle where he was assigned as an experimental aviator amidst the challenging weather conditions.  His first posting was in Luostari Airbase in Murmansk Oblast close to the Norwegian border.  It was in light of the magnificent Aurora Borealis, he made his first flight.  By then, the Soviet Space Programme was once again in media highlights, this time for photographing the yet unseen far-side of the Moon.  This time, the blow upon the US was much more harder, the Soviet-made Luna-3 doing it, making America's efforts a dead-ended exercise strangled by its oversized and overpriced administrative bolsters.  Khrushchev had already stated that USSR's next achievement would be a manned mission to space.  Gagarin couldn't wait any longer.  He returned to Moscow and submitted a request to be considered for 'cosmonaut' training.  The authorities were shocked to read it because rather than a delightful dream of Krushchev, nothing in real sense was envisaged or executed.  However, the day that followed Gagarin's application, two representatives of the top-secret military unit known by the codename '26266' visited Gagarin's residence for discussing the matter.  Later, the 26266-unit became the 'Cosmonauts Training Center' established by order of the Air Force Commander-in-Chief in March 1960 with Colonel Yevgenly Anatolyevich Karpov as its chief.  There was also an assistant to him who was designated as the "Director" of the center, Lieutenant Geneal Nikolay Petrovich Kamanin.

THE MAKING OF A COSMONAUT

                                                     

The cosmonaut selection was officially based on two top secret decrees issued by the USSR Council of Ministers.  The process of selection had begun much before the functioning of the Cosmonauts Training Center.  The cosmonaut candidates were brought in groups to the Central Military Scientific Research Aviation Hospital near to Moscow to undergo a battery of extensive physical psychological and medical examinations.  Initially there was 3,461 candidates which was reduced to just 347 after the first screening.  The physical parameters were a height of 5 feet 6-7 inches (172-174 cm) and body weight of 70-75 kilograms but curiously enough Gagarin did get through with a height of 5 feet 2 inches!  Gagarin's professional suitability and volunteering nature might have helped him beyond other particularities, the biographers comment.  Criteria of moral and ethical characteristics, psychological particularities also were there, again whittling the number of cosmonaut candidates to 206 and then to a final list of 20.  The oldest among these was 35 and the youngest, 25 (German Titov).  Gagarin was 26 with two others of the same age.  They were flown to the Cosmonaut Training Center in the future "Star City" which was in the middle of a vast emptiness in the Eurasian steppe called Tiura-Tam.  It was named after a small railway station "which was hard to reach by any means of transport including camel and donkey, with no water and lot of sand."  As an engineer describing, "it was a place of scorching heat and bone-chilling cold with swarms of rats, lizards and scorpions as numerous as KGB informants.”  In those days there were a dozen launch pads scattered around the 'cosmodrome' but it was not 'Baikonur' as many have erroneously referred to it, the latter now in Kazakhstan.

            In the real sense, the cosmonauts were treated as lab-rats subjecting each of them into the widest possible number of distractions probing the boundaries of human endurance.  The concocted training regime consisted of physiologists, psychologists, physicians of various specializations and engineers.  As one cosmonaut remembers "they seemed to be testing the hypothesis that human body and mind could adapt to any situation."  One test was to solve difficult mathematical equations while sitting in a room where loud-speakers produced noice at the extreme pitch.  Another was the 'Vibration stand which could "not only knock your soul out of you, but also the stones from your kidney."  The most dreaded device was the 'Rotor' which was a centrifuge that simulated the effects of extreme gravitational pull.  It had the shape of a spherical cage spun wildly along the three axes at unimaginable speed (this element of training was avoided after Gagarin's flight, apparently because it was considered a torture!).  A testing time for human psyche was the "publichnost odinochestva", a facility that allowed a person in isolation to be viewed in every possible way whereas the 'captive' couldn't see the watchers.  The isolation chamber prevented every sound from outside except for some directions from the watchers which appeared in the form of blinking of coloured bulbs or codes.  The cosmonaut in the chamber was not allowed to communicate through sound, but through some buttons upon a console which were assigned for specific purposes.  Gagarin was in isolation chamber from July 26 to August 5.  Then he entered the 'Heat Chamber' where the inmates were subjected to extremes of temperature which was reflected back again and again from the walls coated with metal plates.   Humidity also was increased and this ordeal lasted from 30 minutes to 3 hours or until the cosmonaut says he can’t endure it anymore, though such a reluctance was not favoured by the trainers.  The last part of the training was parachute-jumping which was performed from the height of nearly 4 kilometers, during day and night.

THE FINAL TWO

                                                        

Eventually, after the whole set of training schedules, it became a tale of two cosmonauts – Gagarin and German Titov.  They were the final sort from the cream of six selected by the Director Nikolay Kamanin by the end of January 1961.  Among the six, five including Gagarin were ethnic Russians with one being an Ukrainian.  Kamanin was well aware of the fact that the first cosmonaut would achieve instant fame and so he went for an honest "Russian Face," the search he ended in Gagarin.  He had "a smile that never left his face, deep blue eyes and kindness that seemed pouring from his eyes" – as Aleksei Leonov wrote later.   German Titov was equally competent to Gagarin, coming from the Stalingrad Military Aviation School, but it is said his name was that turned against his chance.  Gagarin's name was indisputably Russian whereas 'German Titov suggested a German lineage.  Actually it was a derivative of "Saint Germanus" though it appeared 'German' in pronunciation.  According to the legend, when Khrushchev was shown the names of the two final candidates, he asked: "What kind of Russian is this with a German name, where did you dig him up?" The remaining obstacle for Gagarin to become the first cosmonaut was an argument by the Soviet Rocket Pioneer Sergei Korolov.  He wanted the first cosmonaut to be an Engineering graduate, so that he could more 'technically adapt' himself to the space travel.  However, in the late phase of discussions regarding manned space flight, the vehicle was decided to be fully automated, rendering the cosmonaut to be a passive traveller.  Then the parameters of psychological preparedness and experience in flight were considered which favoured Gagarin at its best.  Titov was younger by an year than Gagarin (he was 25 then) and it counted to the period of experience.  Above all, it was not an honour, but a sacrifice where there was only a 50% chance of survival.  There were records of many botched space-flights throughout 1960 and a launch-pad explosion that killed 126 people.  Kamanin's posthumously published diaries revealed that he had been reserving Titov for later flights, less complicated than Gagarin's.

THE HEROIC FLIGHT

                                                                              
It is not a surprise that Gagarin knew about the dangers of his mission.  In a letter written from the Cosmodrome to his wife, Valya, he asked her to remarry if the launching experiment turned fatal.  He had also asked her to raise their little daughters "not as princesses but as real people."   On April 7, Gagarin and Titov had to sit in the space craft readied for flight in full suit as proposed by engineers.  Around the same time, the space craft was weighed, revealing that the vehicle has reached its top limit of mass allowed.  With Gagarin, it weighed 4,725 kilograms.  So, proposals were putforwarded to launch Titov who was slightly lighter than Gagarin, but Korolov didn't like any change in schedule and it went on unchanged.  On the evening of April 10, a "flight Assignment" was decided for Gagarin. According to the Moscow Time, it had a time frame of one hour 37 minutes, starting from 9:07 to 10:44 in the morning hours of April 12.  Titov was the back-up for Gagarin in the launching schedules and they were given a final technical briefing on the 11^th.  At 5.30 in the morning of April 12, both of them were awakened, given their "space food" along with their routine medical checkups. Gagarin remained cool with a pulse-rate of 64 beats in a minute.  By about 6.30, the dressing up of Titov and Gagarin began.  The Spacesuit had heat-insulation layers causing body temperatures to rise up, so Gagarin was dressed after Titor, to reduce his time inside the suit.  Then Gagarin spent a few minutes in the "test-seat," when technicians checked ventilation and other systems of the spacesuit.  The rocket with the payload vehicle was by then ready at "Site 2" which was a SL-3 variant of the SS-6 Sapwood Rocket with a height of 38.36 meters  It had three stages, the first stage with four breakaway boosters with a total weight of 286.03 tonnes.  The module for Gagarin's travel, named the Vostok 1, was mounted on to the top of the “instrument module” containing the engine system providing 102,000 kg of thrust.  Means, basically it was "on the top of a tin-can placed on the top of a bomb" that Gagarin was destined to sit.

            After spending a few more minutes with Titov and colleagues Gagarin left for "Site 2" where he was took by an elevator to the top of the Rocket.  The launch vessel was a small one-manned spherical module with a diameter of 2.3 meters.  Before boarding to it, Gagarin saw Sergei Korolov looking haggard after a sleepless night. Gagarin was the favourite of Korolev.  Gagarin's trainer Ivanovsky also was there who helped Gagarin up the ladder and into the module.  By then he whispered to his ear- ‘1:2:5’ – code that should be used in case the vehicle needs manual control, under emergency situations.  It was already given to Gagarin in a sealed envelope asking to be opened only in case of danger, but Ivanovsky was not sure whether Gagarin would be doing it in any such kind of situation.  When Gagarin sat up in his seat, he was strapped to it and the hatch was closed. However, the hatch didn't close hermetically indicating to which there was light in the control room.  It was an "one time-one way" hatch also, so Ivanovsky with, the help of a fitter, removed all the 32 screws sealing the hatch and put them back in a frantic pace, which became a reward-claim for the fitter V.I. Morozov, later on.  Despite this intervention, the rocket blasted off nearly as per schedule at 09:06:59.7, Moscow Time.  There was a problem with the Second stage of the Rocket  causing it to burn longer than scheduled, raising the space craft to a 327 km apogee orbit, instead of the planned 230 km.  Gagarin was however not aware of this and communicated his greetings to the ground station also spending a few seconds with his flight journal.  But, due to weightlessness, the journal floated on his back without the pencil (which used to be attached to it with a string) forcing him to use the voice recorder.  However, it was on automatic mode, already working without any useful data recorded, so Gagarin had to rewind it and try recording again, apparently erasing some previous data.

HOME! SWEET HOME!

More than 500 humans have now travelled into space and have watched our home-planet from there, but Gagarin was the first man to see it.  As he began orbiting the Earth, he tasted food and gazed the Earth Flying below.  "There was a good view of the Earth which had a very distinct and pretty blue halo.  It had a smooth transition from pale blue, blue, dark blue, violet and absolute black!  It was a magnificent picture  . . ." Gagarin's official statement after flight read.  He also added – "People of the world, let's safeguard and enhance this beauty, not destroying it!"  Then it was the time to descent and Gagarin expected the 40 second burn of the braking engine, as per the schedule.  Infact, there was a problem.  As the burning of the braking engine was about to begin, a single valve within it failed to close completely, letting some fuel escape into the combustion chamber.  Since everything was fully automatic, this prevented the main engine from cutting off and it burned to empty all of its remaining fuel.  At the same time, the pressurised oxidizer continued escaping through the steering thrusters, causing the rocket to spin wildly around all of its axis at about 30 degree per second.  This was eventually stopped when the preset-timer cut off the engine but scrubing with the primary sequence of separation between the rocket and re-entry module.  At last it did occur, 10 minutes after the scheduled time.  As the module plunged into the atmosphere of earth, the maximum amount of gravitation (G-force) was felt which soon subsided.  At about 7 kilometers from Earth, Gagarin prepared to eject from the module.  The main hatch was jettisoned and he ejected with two parachutes, one secured as back up.  He landed safely onto a field near the Volga river, as witnessed by a famer's wife and her grand daughter.

HERO OF THE WORLD

                                                         

Gagarin's travel to space lasted only for 108 minutes, but that was enough for him to become the national hero of Soviet Union and of the World.  In the official soviet documents however, there is no mention of Gagarin jumping through parachute and the details about Gagarin's landing were not known to the world for a long time, till the "iron-curtain" failed. When local newspapers tried to make stories of Anna Akimovna and her grand daughter seeing gagarin's descent, the KGB officials went to their office and blocked it.  This was because as per the prevailing international rules on aviation then, the pilot "should have to remain in the craft, from launch to landing."  This rule, if applied to Gagarin's flight, would have disqualified him in being "the first traveller in space."  Nevertheless, Gagarin's historic launch to space and return was the news-headline all over the world.  He was awarded the official title of "Hero of the Soviet Union" and got double promotion to the rank of a major.  After his flight, Gagarin spent almost an year in travelling all over the world with his wife Valya, as a living icon of the Soviet achievement.  He visited Chechoslavakia, Finland, England, Iceland, Brazil, Canada, Hungary, France, Cuba, Afghanistan, India and Srilanka. After returning from the world-tour he became actively involved in training his comrades for flight and he was deservedly made the Deputy Chief of Cosmonaut Training. In 1967, he began training for the first Soyuz flight, becoming the back-up pilot for Vladdimir Komarov who died in a fatal crash. By then, Soviet officials tried to keep him away from any further flights but Gagarin wanted to reach for the skies once again. That dream but remained unfulfilled as Gagrain was killed in MiG-jet crash on 27 March 1968, at the age of 34. It was a very sad event for Soviet Union and for the whole world, though the actual reason behind the accident was never revealed or found out. The grief from his death was even enough to cross the battle field of the Cold War. It is well documented by the plaque left on Moon by Apollo 15 mission in memory of Gagarin. Let’s also salute this Russian Icarus at the 50^th anniversary of his great achievement, opening a new vista to the world of space that was never known before.

(The full article can be read from Science Reporter, July 2011. Link: http://www.niscair.res.in/sciencecommunication/Popularization%20of%20Science/SciRep/scirep2k11/sr_jul11.asp)

FLOWER BEDS OF KERALA AND THE FACTS MYSTIFIED

                                                                             
Athappookkalam- the traditional Flower-bed pattern of Kerala seems to gain a fresh scientific outlook nowadays, rather a new face being lost in the hustle splendour of ritual mockeries. These indigenous flower-beds created and presented as a welcome-sign for the legendary king Mahabali, apart from its ceremonial etiquettes represent some sedulous efforts mystified in a mythical ambience. The floral patterns still practiced on the eve of the Festival of Onam shares some features that remain unlinked to its history as a harvest merriment. In addition to its informal affiliation to enviro-ethic and nature education, the syntax prevailed for these floral formulations reflect the relics of what we term today as herbal or folk systematics.


In the true sense, flower-beds of Kerala represent a medieval uplift of the alpha- taxonomy that came wavering through the ravages of time. Largely in the form of traditional knowledge these data collected and preserved by the folks served as the denizen’s database for the benefit of the epicurean life they followed. Obviously enough these included recipes for folk-medicines, antidotes and other herbal preparations. The chief characteristic regarding this was that though appearing rustic sometimes, atleast some factual details about the local flora were known to almost everyone and this remained perceptual also. What did the norms and regulations for Pookkalams really aim was to transcend these ethnic know-how towards the generations to come.


As per the folklore, flower-bed preparations in Kerala are not exclusive to Onam season. Keralites make Pookkalams as part of four festive events in a year, the first being the Onappookkalam, the second during the Pooram celebrations of far-North Malabar, the third on the auspicious day of Pathinaram Makam and the fourth on the birthday of Lord Krishna (Ashtamirohini). In addition, the southern fringes of Trivandrum district has one more flower centered ritual as an adoration of the Goddess of Justice Bhadra, popularly known as Pooppada. However, the selection and combination of flowers differ very much in case of the above said floral adornments. Similarly the Pooram ceremony of Malabar aiming at the exhilaration of the God of love Kamadeva, yet another variety of flowers are used, mainly as ominous symbols.


The flower selection for Onappookkalams surpasses all its contemporary sacraments by not trying to decipher any thing from an occult or obscure entity that is presented. Moreover it had a scientific backup also. More than twenty different verities of flowers were used in Onam flower-beds throughout the whole ten days of its periodic modulation to a fine, fulsome culmination at the end. The first flower to be used in Pookkalam is that of Mathan (Cucurbita moschata) upon the earthen idol of Lord Ganapathi. On the first day, there will be white flowers only which is insisted to be Thumbapoovu (Leucas aspera) with tender leaves of  Thulasi (Ocimum sanctum) at the centre. The second day is specified for Arippoovu (Lantana camara). From third day onwards flowers with varying colours may be used, but traditionally it should be a medley of yellow, white and red.


Even after the local preferences made Thumbapoovu remains as a mandate for Onam flower-beds throughout Kerala region. This special status though reminiscent of some mythological connections, has some scientific relevance also. Three varieties of Thumba are found growing in the highlands of Kerala having vernacular names such as Karimthumba (Anisomeles malabarica), Perumthumba (Leucas aspera). Among these, only Leucas aspera is acceptable as Onappoovu while the others have to be discarded. It is interesting to note that this particular selection was made by the groups of children in a playful environment filled with chants of Poove Poli ..... Poove Poli. It should be noted that, today, such an identification procedure demands various inferences and deductive keys for even a post-graduate student of plant systematics.


Similar restrictions are there for Nathyarvattom (Tabernaemontana divaricata) which is known as East Indian Rosebay. Two varieties of this plant are usually seen in Kerala, one by the name Nanthyarvartham and the other Kuttananthyarvattom. Only the former was preferred in Pookkalams while the other remained as an inferior alternative. Such preferences take a curious form indeed when some plants are seen to be exempted from such kind of strict specifications. A good example is Mukkutii (Biophytum reinwardtii) which possesses one more closely related variety such as Biophytum sensitivum var. candolleanum. Strangely enough both were equally acceptable on Onam flower-beds. Here we can see the concept of a folk-systematics gaining shape or transcending to herbal systematics. Let’s trace out how it happened.


The aspera species of the genus Leucas and the divaricata species of  Tabernaemontana were one the specific ingredients of folk-medicines prevalent in ancient lives of Kerala. As revealed by modern Ethnopharmacological studies, the active principle in these which render them therapeutic properties couldn’t be substituted even by a closely related species. The healing effect of an alternate species may not be in the desirable way as it is largely concerned with the alkaloid like chemical components they hold. Again it can be presumed that, in the case of Mukkutti and others such restrictions hadn’t existed because their related varieties are some what similar in the biochemical composition. These aspects generally defined under the auspices of Ethnopharmacognosy however needs further clarifications and lab trials.


Yet another importance of the pragmatic curriculum the Pookkalams uphold lies in the efforts it made to spread the love for nature and a mind to conserve it. Flower bed preparations of Kerala irrespective of its formal priorities included flowers from plants of no obvious economic benefits. The best example is Kakkothippoovu or Kakkappoovu which is used for making the special flower bed of the auspicious day of Kakkappooradam. This ceremony had much cultural coalitions with the Onam celebrations of central Travancore. The plant which is used in this ritual is Utricularia reticulata of Lentibulariaceae family. Preferring naturally wet and moist rock surfaces to grow, this plant has become so sparse in occurrence that it need to be designated as threatened. May we think the ancient Keralites foresaw the fragility of its habitat and conserved it by rendering a special status to its flower. May not be, but if so, it is ingenious enough.


UNESCO recognizes the making of ritual flower beds such as Onappookkalam as tek (traditional environmental knowledge) practices and evidently underlines their conservation and progression. However, what still remains unnoticed is the aptitude of science that many of these teks carry in their eclipsed faces. There are many flower-centered rituals in Kerala and many among these are reminiscences of the diverse and rich local flora that we had in our past. These can even function as documents more comprehensive and complete than the much hailed record in print such as Hortus Malabaricus. But what actually needed is a thorough understanding of the soul and spirit of our cultural rites, rather than procuring patent numbers for everything that seem indigenous and employing the policy of a dog in the manger.

(For photos and scientific names of flowers used in Onappookkalams, please read Malayalam article on My blog www.sasthraveedhi.blogspot.com.)

LASER AT 50

                                                                                 

                                                                               
On 21 July 1969, before leaving to Earth, astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin had set up an array of small reflectors on the surface of Moon. About ten days later, a team of astrophysicists at University of California’s Lick Observatory, pointed their telescope towards the precise location of human landing and sent a small pulse of power into the tiny instrument they had added to the telescope. The narrow beam of red light that emerged from it pierced the sky and disappeared into outer space. Slightly more than a second after the beam hit the reflectors, the Lick team detected the faint reflection of it. The time period between the launch of the pulse of light and return of it permitted calculation of the distance between Earth and Moon with unprecedented precision, to the extent of correction within an inch. The wonder ray that made this possible was LASER, a brand new invention that was demonstrated just nine years before, in 1960.

                                                                              
It was the brain child of a 32 year old engineer-turned-physicist at Hughes Research Laboratories, Mailbu, California. His name was Theodore Maiman, but at that time, it was considered rather useless, upon which even his colleagues moked him, saying. “Aha! Great solution! But what could be the problem?” Infact nobody could not even imagine that Maiman’s invention would become literally the workhorse of modern physics and so engraved on to everyday life. And today in its fiftieth birth anniversary, LASER is here to cool atoms, send data mend eyes and trigger fusion. While it is the “death ray” in military applications, it is forming part of high-life through spectacular “LASER shows” in stage concerts. It is there in our DVD’s, Bar-code scanners and latest mobilephones and so simply, it is unavoidable.


The History of LASER
It goes to Einstein for a starting point in the history of LASER, who at the prime of his fame, establishing the idea of stimulated emission, in 1917. It was a re-derivation of Max Plank’s Law of Radiation through conceptual advancement. However, till the end of 1940s, the principle of stimulated emission was hardly sought, as the concept was largely considered a theoretical one. Einstein based it in thermodynamics, that if light can force an atom to go upto high energy states, it can also force an atom to give up its energy and drop to lower states. While this “stimulated energy loss” happens, it will also lead to amplification of the emitted photon, a phenomenon called Coherent Amplification. In short, it is amplification stimulated by light” creating a stronger emission (later abridged as LASER – Light Amplified by Stimulated Emission of Radiation). The first brilliant success was made by Charles Towens, who used this phenomenon to amplify the microwaves. The resultant device was called MASER, the acronym for ‘Microwave Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation’. And in their historical paper published in Physical Review, Townes and his co-worker Arthur Schawlow hoped that the MASER concept could be extended to an “optical MASER”, in other words, the LASER.

                                                                              
Thus it paved the way for a race to build a LASER, in which Bell Laboratories was destined to win as the research group led by Charles Townes was there. Bell Lab, the then called Bell Telephone Laboratories, was a well funded research institute with a backdrop of several high profile achievements. Even within Bell Lab there were other groups, well outside it also, to join the race. In US alone, there were more that six research labs including the much famous General Electric and IBM. Townes former PhD student was also among the rivals, Gordon Gould, who abandoned his thesis work and joined a private company engaged in LASER research, to realize it. But, the dark horse was yet to join the race, Theodore Maiman, who was then at Hughes Research Laboratories, the research arm of Hughes Aircraft Company. Maiman’s engineering and physics experience was an added advantage, when the company wanted a MASER, as per the contract it signed with the US Army corps of Engineers. It was his efforts to make the MASER more compact and practical, that led to the LASER.


Maiman’s “Eureka”
The reason why light is usually absorbed in materials IS simply that substances almost always have more atoms or molecules in lower states than in higher states so that more photons are absorbed than emitted. So, the trick in making a LASER is to produce a material in which the energies of the molecules or atoms are put in excited states than in ground states. A wave of electromagnetic energy moving through such a substance will pick up, rather than losing energy. However, just one pass of the wave through the substance wont give much amplification and so multiple reflections are to be there. This is achieved by placing two parallel mirrors on either side of the material, of which one mirror is partially transparent. When the internal reflections are enough to build up substantial amount of power, the ray will penetrate out through the transparent mirror. This was the theoretical blue-print and next came the choke of the material. Maiman was familiar with the properties of Ruby from his earlier works and so he selected it. Ruby is a crystal of Aluminum Oxide (Al2O3) in which a few Chromium atoms are dispersed as impurities. These Chromium atoms which exist as ions by losing three of its electrons can absorb green light from the visible spectrum and go to excited states. When electron fall back to ground state from these high energy levels, they fluoresce in red. Maimum was thinking that he could use this red fluorescence to create LASER.

                                                                             
The path ahead was however not smooth as he thought. The first blow came from Arthur Schawlow who was his brother-in-law and work-mate. In September 1959, shortly after Maiman started his project, Schawlow publicly declared that Ruby couldn’t be a candidate for stimulated emission. He argued that, for that to happen, more electrons need to reside in the upper energy level than in the lower ones, a condition known as ‘Population Inversion” As per Schawlow, it was impossible to achieve this, for a three-level energy system such as Ruby, while it is much easier for a “four-level energy system”. Whether this was practically true or else was not the question but with repeated counseling against Ruby that came all along from respected scientists, Maiman’s employer stoped funding his research. For Maiman it was not a discouragement as he was willing to spend from his own pocket, but the next hurdle was not much beyond. The problem was the ‘quantum efficiency’ of Ruby, ie, the number of fluorescence-photons emitted for each light photon absorbed. In a much discussed paper published in the Review of Scientific Instruments (30, 995), Irwin Wieder, a scientist personally trained by Maiman claimed that the quantum efficiency of Ruby was just 1%, not enough to attain a stimulated emission. And as per the calculations of Maiman, for a successful emission it should be 75%, an ardent but improbable objective! However, there was a silver-line that if he could have a very bright pump of light source, it could work. And the ‘eureka’ moment came from reading an article about photographic-lamps, which could achieve ‘brightness temperature’ of 8000K. Everything that had to follow was more easy with the help of his technical assistant Irnee d’ Haenens and on 16 May 1960 they got the first evidence of a LASER in action, the lifetime achievement of Maiman.

In Limelight? No!
In the euphoric days that followed, Maiman tried to refine his equipment and immediately prepared a report of his exciting results submitting it to Physical Review Letters on 24th June. However, the journal editor didn’t accept the paper, stating that the MASER-physics had already reached a mature state and “yet another MASER-paper” didn’t deserve rapid publication. [No wonder, Maiman’s invention was not ‘LASER’ then, it was only ‘optical-MASER’, as it was not Maiman but Gordon Gould, a graduate student at Colombia University who later named it as LASER]. Anyway, Maiman had to pen a shorter version of his original article and send it to Nature, where it was accepted (187, 493). It was scheduled for the 6th August issue of it, but Hughes Lab was anxious to conduct a press conference before that because since Bell Labs was involved in the race, there was no prize for a ‘runner up’! Thus the world came to know about it on July 7, 1960 which erased the long held conviction that LASER is not practically a possible thing. But many still continued to (or liked to!) disbelieve it. Though the potentialities of LASER were not known at that time, there was one more reason for Maiman not being in the lime light. On 1st August 1960, Shawlow and Townes at Bell Labs could reproduce Maiman’s result and got it published also in the same journal that rejected Maiman’s paper. It appeared in the October issue of Physical Review Letters and many who read it thought that Bell Laboratories was the first to build LASER. For the American scientific circles as well as public, Shawlow and Townes were familiar personalities and Bell Lab’s trials on LASER implementation was rather well known also. So, even after 50 years, the invention of LASER still remain controversial, atleast at the score boards of the rival fronts.

The LASER Revolution

                                                                                    
The light of a LASER differ from that of an ordinary light source, iust like music differs from noice. Moreover, a LASER beam can travel kilometers without much increase in its diameter. For example, when a Ruby-LASER was sent to Moon from Earth, the spot it created on the surface of Moon was only 9 km, even after travelling 2,40,000 miles. Another quality of LASER is its immense luminous intensity. If we point our forefinger to sunlight, the power that falls on it is about one tenth of a watt. But, if light from LASER can be concentrated on it, it would be 109 watts. The size of a LASER device can be as big as a football field or as small as a pin-head. The light they emit can be invisible infrared, ultraviolet, X-ray or all the colours of the rainbow. The wavelength of some LASERs is tunable and their intensity can be amplified through several orders of magnitude. Some LASERs can’t even emit enough energy to cook an egg, where as certain others can vapourize steel! The pulse of a LASER can be as short as to last for a second (10-15s) while some others can create continuous beams that will remain for decades to come. However, many of these potentialities came through many years of research and in the beginning many entrepreneurs found that there were very few possibilities for commercial exploitation of LASERs. Many companies couldn’t even pursue definite applications from this field.
The next type of LASER that immediately followed Maiman’s Ruby-LASER was Helium-Neon-LASER developed by Bell Laboratories in the same year, 1960. But the first LASER that became the most prevalent type was the Diode-LASER made up of the semiconductor Gallium Arsenide. It soon mushroomed into a wide variety of commercial versions which still holds the global market. The first automated LASER scanning machine was used in a supermarket checkout-counter in Ohio in 1974 paving the way for a Universal Product Code (UPC). Called simply as the ‘bar-code’, it is used billions of times everyday by retailers and manufactures worldwide today. In late 1970s, the first trans-atlantic fibre-optic cables were laid down which became operating through diode-LASERs. They could deliver light into fibres with a few micrometers of core diameter and thus interconnecting the world in an integral way. The effect was a revolution in communication which sweeped Europe and US in late 1980s. In industry, there was yet another wonder that enabled metal cutting as easy as slicing a cake. It was the carbon dioxide-LASER that became a standardized cutting-tool even from 1970s. In automobile industry, it introduced a new technique such as “remote welding” which made multiple spot welds possible through “optical steering”. This opened a new opportunity for LASER to be used as weapons though such fancies were already there with the development of Maiman’s small LASER. But, rather than a “death ray”, its first military application was for range finding. The first target LASER designators was used in the Vietnam War, in 1972. It made bombs intelligent rather than being stupid by falling anywhere. Ronald Reagen’s ‘Star Wars’ programme was envisaging LASERs to be anti-missile weapons. Today these have become the norm for every country including India.

From the war-field, where the LASER directly entered was the music studio, one may hardly believe! In 1970s, Sony and Philips began developing music digitally recorded on shiny plastic discs that were 12 cm in diameter, popularly known as “Compact Discs” (CDs). The first digitalized music album came out as CD in 1982 with 74 minute of playback capacity –it was the album “52nd street” by Billy Joel. In the mid 1990s, the Digital Video Discs (DVDs) came which could store an entire feature length film. ‘Blue-ray Discs’ (BDs) were the next generation with 50 gigabyte capacity capable of holding more than five films in exceptionally high resolution. Simultaneously, beam-scanning systems were inverted which could dynamically follow music and trace intricate patterns in space. The first spectacular event by it was at “Expo 70” World Fair in Osaka, Japan. Rock concerts by bands like Pink Floyd usually employed them to evoke awe and surprise until restrictions came up due to safety reasons. In the field of medicine also, LASER heralded an authetic revolution. The first medical use of LASER was in 1961, when doctors at Columbia University of Medical Center in New York destroyed a retinal tumour by using a Ruby-LASER. Ophthalmology was the most benefited field where LASER was used for diagnosis as well as surgical cures. It enabled doctors to precisely vaporize a tissue or shapen it as they wish. A classical example is LASIK (LASER-Assisted in situ Keratomileusis) Surgery where LASER is used to reshape the cornea. In 1968, LASER proved to be a bloodless way to crush the kidney stone opening its potential towards guided surgeries. Now, it is routinely used to treat skin tumours as well as inaccessible brain tumours.

LASER in fiction

                                                                              
Imaginations about an invisible ray that could be used as a weapon was there is fiction before the principle of LASER was even thought of. The author who popularized it as a “death ray” was H.G. Wells, who in his 1898 tale ‘The War of the Worlds’ described it as an “inevitable, invisible sword of heat” that Martians use against the Earthlings. 1927, Alexey Tolstoy depicted a LASER-like devise in his science fiction novel ‘The Hyperboloid of Engineer Garin.’ Through the 1930s these predictions were well played in celluloid also. In his novel ‘Fatal Eggs’, Mikhail Bulgakov used it to create some “biological effects” on the target thought it was shown as a beam of red- light that emerges from an advanced microscope. In the 1951- film ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’ LASER was the weapon the powerful robot uses. This was one of the reasons why the newspapers first quoted Maiman’s invention as “Death Ray” to the great dismay of him. In ‘Star Wars: Episode IV’ also the doomsday-fear was triggered using LASER. But, here it was not man but a distant star using LASER beams to destroy the Earth.

New Dawns

                                                                          

Let’s return to Einstein. In 1918 itself, he had predicted the existence of gravitational waves produced by moving masses. But until today, it has not beet directly detected. This is one of the research areas of future where LASER plays a part. The equipment used for this is an Interferometer which was first built in 1978 though much powerful versions are still in progress. These are dubbed LIGO-LASER Interferometer Gravitationalwave Observatory of which one is in Hanford and other in Livingston. Another is in Cascina in Italy officially known as VIRGO, which was opened in July 2003. Astrophysicist expect that LIGO and VIRGO may in someday detect Einstein’s dream waves. LASER was also there to realize Einstein another prediction which he did in 1924, about the existence of a special state of matter in which the so called bosons may be forced to stay in a state with identical quantum properties. In 1995, that state was achieved which was called Bose-Einstein Condensation. With it, it was possible to explore certain aspects of quantum mechanics and superconductivity, the classical epitomes of modern physics. Similar attempts are made by the National Ignition Facility, California where conditions akin to the heart of a star is created aiming to produce fusion power or the contrivances for it. The next telescopes are employing adaptive optics based on laser technology enabling astronomers to ascertain the position and movement of extrasolar planets. Yes, what we have is "Aladdin’s Lantern" and what we need yet is only the imagination to order things to do! And it is the real ‘problem’ created by LASER!


Reference


1. Perkowitz, Sidney (2010) “From Ray-gun to Blu-ray”. Physics World, May 2010, pp.16.20.


2. Rigby, Pauline (2010) “And then there was light”. Physics World, May 2010, pp. 23-27.


3. Fischer, Ernst Peter (2009) “Where only the new is considered, the old grows”.   LASER Community, February 2009. p.21.


4. CH Townes (1999) “How the Laser Happened”. Oxford University Press, New York.