300 Years of the Longitude Problem

For centuries, humans knew to estimate Latitude of a place on earth from the altitude of pole star or inclination of Sun's trajectory across the sky. However, they did not know how to find the other coordinate - Longitude - till 300 years ago. The talk is about the problem of finding Longitude at high seas, which was considered unsolvable till middle of Eighteenth century and for which prize money of £20,000 was declared in 1714 by the British parliament (equivalent to £2.5 million in 2014). Innumerable lives were lost due to frequent shipwrecks and starvation deaths resulting from lack of the knowledge of Longitude. Apart from the interesting history of solution to the problem, the talk also includes the associated anecdote of one of the first instances of politics in scientific circle.

About Dr. Achintya Pal:

The speaker, a TIFR alumnus, retired as an executive of Oil & Natural Gas Corporation Ltd (ONGC), the national oil company of India. Over the years, he is considered as an expert in oil exploration related geodesy and map projection systems and in Geographical Information System (GIS). A visit to the Royal Observatory in Greenwich kindled his interest in the Longitude Problem. After doing his Bachelor’s from Presidency College and Masters from University of Calcutta, Dr Achintya Pal did PhD in Theoretical Physics in 1982 from TIFR where he developed interest in Astronomy and Astrophysics. Later he spent two years as visiting research fellow at the Institute for Geophysics at the University of Texas at Austin. Among his other interests are Hindustani classical music and study of history and literature.