Cyclotron: An early history of experimental nuclear physics in India

Jahnavi Phalkey will discuss the early years of experimental nuclear physics in India, as seen through efforts to build or acquire particle accelerators in Indian universities. She will especially discuss her recent film, Cyclotron, about the world’s oldest functional particle accelerator and the people who keep it running today. Operational in 1936 at the University of Rochester, United States, it was built merely three years after the very first cyclotron was built by Ernest Lawrence at Berkeley. The entire set-up in Rochester was dismantled and sent to India in 1967, and is now housed at the Panjab University, Chandigarh. With the cyclotron, the regional university became one of the very few places in India for research and education in nuclear physics. This was otherwise possible only in the facilities of the Department of Atomic Energy. The cyclotron has been running for nearly fifty years in Chandigarh. The film explores the life and legacy of the machine as well as the struggles and triumphs of its technicians, researchers and students. It is a comment on the state of experimental research and higher education in Indian universities.

About the Speaker:
Jahnavi Phalkey is the Founding Director of Science Gallery Bengaluru. Formerly based at King’s College London, Jahnavi was Fellow, Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (Institute of Advanced Study, Berlin). She was also external curator to the Science Museum London, and has been a Scholar-in-Residence at the Deutsches Museum, Munich. She is the author of Atomic State: Big Science in Twentieth Century India and has co-edited Science of Giants: China and India in the Twentieth Century. Jahnavi read civics and politics at the University of Bombay, and the School of Oriental and African Studies, London. She holds a doctoral degree in the history of science and technology from the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta.