The Life and Science of Thanu Padmanabhan
Abstract
Thanu Padmanabhan was a renowned Indian theoretical physicist known for his research in general relativity, cosmology, and quantum gravity. In an extraordinary career spanning forty-two years, he published more than three hundred research articles, wrote ten highly successful technical and popular books, and mentored nearly thirty graduate students and post-doctoral fellows. He is best known for his deep work investigating gravitation as an emergent thermodynamic phenomenon. He was an outstanding teacher, and an indefatigable populariser of science, who travelled very widely to motivate and inspire young students. Paddy, as he was affectionately known, was also a close friend to his students and collaborators, treating them as part of his extended academic family. On September 17, 2021 Paddy passed away very unexpectedly, at the age of sixty-four and at the height of his research career, while serving as a Distinguished Professor at the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Pune. His untimely demise has come as a shock to his family and friends and colleagues. In this article, several of them have come together to pay their tributes and share their fond memories of Paddy.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2110.03208,
title = {The Life and Science of Thanu Padmanabhan},
author = {Jasjeet Singh Bagla and Krishnakanta Bhattacharya and Sumanta Chakraborty and Sunu Engineer and Valerio Faraoni and Sanved Kolekar and Dawood Kothawala and Kinjalk Lochan and Sujoy Modak and V. Parameswaran Nair and Aseem Paranjape and Krishnamohan Parattu and Sarada G. Rajeev and Bibhas Ranjan Majhi and Tirthankar Roy Choudhury and Mohammad Sami and Sudipta Sarkar and Sandipan Sengupta and T. R. Seshadri and S. Shankaranarayanan and Suprit Singh and Tejinder P. Singh and L. Sriramkumar and Urjit Yajnik},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2110.03208},
year = {2021}
}
Comments
In Memoriam of Prof. T. Padmanabhan (1957-2021)