Prof. R. Vasudevan in conversation with Prof. B.S. Murty
Good morning, Professor Vasudevan.
Thank you.
Thanks for coming and then giving us a chance to interact with you
and to listen to you about those days, the golden days
that everyone talks about when you were here,
for quite some time. I heard that, you came here
in '63 and stayed here until '97?
So, we want to hear more from you -n
how did you join IIT Madras, what did you do
before joining IIT Madras, and then your days at IIT Madras,
your academics and also otherwise.
So, we would like to listen from you
about your whole experience at IIT Madras.
Well, you could call it the musings of a Methuselah, you know,
I will try to make it as brief as possible.
I am nudging 83,
so, I have to cover a great deal of ground.
Since, you asked about my early days,
I came to Madras as a boy of 8 in the year 1943.
You must permit me to use the term Madras
with regard to Chennai, because that was the
name of the city all the time that we stayed here.
It's the name of the institute also sir, it is still IIT Madras.
It is still IIT Madras. Whenever, somebody tells me IIT Chennai,
Exactly. I correct them.
It's IIT Madras in general. Yes. Correct, by act of parliament, it's only IIT Madras.
Sir, sir, please, go ahead. Yeah.
So, for me, it will always remain Madras only. Okay.
So, I came to Madras in the year 1943,
when the 2nd World War was still raging.
I still remember going to school,
and my mother was warning me. In those days,
the Japanese were bombing; Madras was bombed by the Japanese.
And my mother had told me...in those days,
while going to school - I had to walk about 2
miles to go to my school -
she told me what to do when there is a siren.
There was a siren mounted in those days on all the
metro stations. There was only one line from Beach to Tambaram, Okay.
and there was a siren mounted on each of those.
And, the siren would go off at the time a plane was coming.
So, my mother had warned me - the moment a siren
comes on, run into the nearest place;
if you are sitting in a classroom, run to one edge of
the classroom, don't be at the center,
and have a pencil between your
teeth, so that no explosive sound would lead you to bite
your tongue and all that.
So, these were my earliest memories.
There were air raid shelters all around Madras,
and these were removed only in the year 1944,
actually, by my father, who was a retired PWD officer,
who was charged, at that time, to remove all the air raid shelters.
There was one air raid shelter removing something...looking like a
hard stone cylinder, that’s what they would look like.
And, immediately opposite Kodambakkam railway station,
it was there...these things were removed.
So, that is my earliest recollection of Madras city.
I remember the end of the war in 1945,
when the symbol V was flashed on the sky from
Meenambakkam Aerodrome in 1945, when Germany surrendered.
I remember, when India got independence in 1947.
I was at school and we were all marched off to the
playground and each of us were given one packet of sweets. Wow.
Yeah. That is all.
So, I completed my schooling in the year
1949. And, I was under aged. In
those days, you know, unless you are had a
minimum 14 years 6 months, you could not join college. Okay.
So, I had to waste one year. I spent my time learning...
time learning short hand and typewriting.
1950, in keeping with our family practice,
I joined the Madras Christian College.
Madras Christian College for us, was a family tradition;
my elder sister studied there,
my elder brother studied there,
my cousin studied there, even my grandfather
studied in Madras Christian College. Okay.
So, I took my intermediate there. All your family college.
Yeah, it was.
So, I took my intermediate degree in the year 1950.
The intermediate in those days was like the 12th standard now.
The schools were giving only up to SSLC, that is 10th standard.
In Andhra Pradesh, which I belong to, we still call it as intermediate.
You still call it intermediate.
So, this is what it was like that. And, following that,
I branched off into physics; my background is actually physics.
I took an honours degree in physics from...
Most of the people I know, who have
done metallurgy, they are all chemists. Yeah.
This is something unique. No, not necessarily.
Your own guide, Professor Ranganathan...
Professor Ranganathan was a chemist.
Chemistry sir, I know he was a chemist. Chemistry back ground? I thought that he was a physics background.
Well, anyway, Professor K. S. Raghavan, my colleague and Professor... But anyway...
No, sir... Professor E. G. Ramachandran, also physics.
So, I took physics honors, in which, my demonstrator
there was Mr. T. N. Seshan, the celebrated
Chief Election Commissioner of later days.
Before he wrote the IAS, you know, he also took physics honors. Okay.
And then, he was there at that time.
In 1955, having completed physics honors...the Advance
Centre for X-ray Diffraction here, under
Professor G. N. Ramachandran had just started. Okay.
And, they were offering an MSc degree course;
directly offered by the university not through a college. Okay.
Straight through the university. I was therefore,
the student of the celebrated biofacies Professor G. N. Ramachandran, Okay.
I was one of his direct students. And my other teacher,
there was Professor Alladi Ramakrishnan,
The director of the Institute of Mathematical Sciences.
And, at that time, way back in 195-in 1956,
for the first time, we came into contact and could use
actual X-ray diffraction equipment, Wow.
including cameras and all that.
So, it was a privilege to be connected with Professor
G. N. Ramachandran, who was a direct and if I may
mention, a favorite student of Professor C. V. Raman.
Actually, it's been my privilege to be
connected with two people connected with Sir C. V. Raman.
Professor G. N. Ramachandran was one, and the
other was Professor E. G. Ramachandran...E G Ramachandran
himself, later on. Yeah.
So, I took my MSc from the University of Madras,
specialization was x-ray crystallography; that’s my background,
x-ray crystallography.
At that time, my desire was not to become a teacher
or even to go to the IAS, but to join the Indian Air Force. Oh!
I appeared for the interview-for the interview for
Indian Air Force at Dehradun, all the way. There was only
one centre where they used to conduct the interviews.
It was 4 days of hard interviews, you had a lot of
tough tests and psychological examinations and all that.
Four people from all over India were selected, one of them was myself.
Wow! Good.
Having been selected from Dehradun, we were sent to Delhi,
to the Armed Forces Medical Centre there for medical checkup.
In those days, they were not so keen to recruit people, nearly
50 percent of people selected, would be rejected medically.
On the very first day, I was selected.
So, I thought I had my commission on hand,
but unfortunately, the next day the whole thing was
overturned and they said "you are disqualified."
So, it's really the slip between the cup and the lip.
This time the cup was almost, at the lip.
So, it fell. So, so that was really a shattering
experience for me, because that was my greatest ambition.
You know, in those days there were not many options open to people.
Either you had to go into the defense forces or
you have to join the IAS, these were the only
Class One kind of jobs available.
But right then, in the '50s, the steel plants were coming up. Okay.
And someone told me, that a study of metallurgy
would also give you a fairly good career.
In those days, the only centre giving education in metallurgy
in South India was the Indian Institution of Science. Okay.
The total number of students selected from
all over India was 16; there is a quota system, and
the number limited to Tamilnadu was 3.
Although the basic requirement was only
a BSc degree, you could never hope to get the BSc degree from
Tamilnadu there, you must have had an honors degree or an MSc degree
with a university rank, otherwise you wouldn't get it.
Anyway, I managed to get into it.
And, I was privileged to be a student of Professor T. R. Anantharaman. Wow, wow.
Few may have heard of him.
He had one of the most distinguished academic careers, Okay.
anyone could wish for. Yeah.
From school onwards, he was throughout first,
in the stated University. He was a Rhodes fellow.
In those days the Rhodes fellowship was offered to
only two people, annually, all over India.
Professor Anantharaman...and it was a pleasure to listen to him.
So, he was our role model.
And, with my background in physics,
and he was teaching his physical metallurgy,
My love for physical metallurgy grew. Well.
So, I became a physical metallurgist from that time onwards.
So, having completed the diploma course in metallurgy,
there were the usual options for me,
I could join Hindustan Steels,
I could join atomic energy commission;
I had an offer from both of these. Okay.
The IIT Madras was just starting.
So, I appeared for an interview,
I was selected for a faculty position at that time, Wow.
in the year 1959. '59.
But, the engineering classes were yet to begin after 2 or 3 years.
So, they shunted some of us off to Germany,
for an advanced technological training.
So, there were only 3 centres in those days
giving advanced technological training in metallurgy;
one was Berlin,
one was Clausthal, the third thing was Aachen. Aachen.
There was one Professor T. Ramachandran,
who served for a short time here.
He later on became a head of the
department and the principal at Surathkal. Okay.
Professor T. Ramachandran was already at Clausthal. Okay.
And, when we corresponded with him,
he said, "there is no place for you here."
And at that time, Berlin,
there was a little bit of a problem, if you will remember.
That was a time when Germany was divided into two parts,
and you could approach West Berlin only through East Germany.
Through East Germany.
So, I did not opt for it.
So, I came to Aachen.
Incidentally, I met a later colleague
who was to work here also, Mr. Dasgupta. Dasgupta.
Professor E. G. R. must have mentioned about him.
Mr. Somshankar Dasgupta was also there at
Aachen at that time, he came a little earlier.
I started my research work at the Technical University
of Aachen in the same area in which
Professor Anantharaman was working, namely,
stacking for parameter determination
and then, its effect on work hardening.
Very recently, I should tell you, sir, IIT Madras
and Aachenn have a strategic partnership, okay,
with a lot money pumped into between
the two institutions and lot of work is going on.
Much better, exactly. Lot of student exchanges are going on
between the two institutions.
That's what I said.
So, I started doing...but maybe at this time
I should interject with a few of my other experiences
as part of the narrative.
I mentioned already that, in those days, it was more
or less always common to have a ship journey
only from India to anywhere, whether it's
America or Germany and all that.
So, Professor Kraus who was coordinating the
IIT Madras activities from Germany,
he suggested, we take a boat from India
and he would reimburse our travel from there.
There was some confusion in those days between Bonn, Delhi and madras.
So, when we left from here, I checked with
Mr. Natarajan, "where I should go?"
He said, "you take the boat, you go to Bonn,
you meet the education officer in Bonn,
who will then tell you where you have to go."
This was supposed to be a
technological training preceded by a language course
- to pick up the language - it's given in a
different place, small place.
So, when we had all booked together, that Professor Ramanujam,
he was also along with me.
Professor Y. B. G. Verma,
both of these people, they were also...
Then, there was one, Dr. Garud,
who later on became principal at Nagpur.
VNIT, Nagpur. Yeah.
Well, when I studied there, he was the principal. Yeah.
Yeah, we all went together by the same boat. Okay.
And, there was one Raju also. Four of us had
booked a cabin in by boat.
Just a few days before we were leaving, there was a
telegram from the DAAD saying, "your tickets
have been booked by plane."
This is created another confusion because
we had already booked it by boat.
Anyway, I managed to contact the people,
they said, "okay, you can go by boat."
So, we took the boat from Bombay. It was a 14 day
journey from Bombay to Genoa and from Genoa
we were to take a train and this train would take us through Italy,
through Switzerland into Germany.
So, when I was going, its pretty interesting, that time,
the Suez Canal had just been reopened.
In 1956, you would have heard, there was a problem in the Suez Canal;
Gamal Abdel Nasser had blocked it.
So, people had to go all the way around Africa,
like Vasco da Gama in the old days.
At our time, it had been opened.
So, the interesting point that I want to mention
to you was that, Suez Canal is a very
narrow channel, like this, and there are two terminal points;
one is called Suez the other is called Port Side.
For those of the ship passengers, who want to
have a look at Cairo and have a look at the pyramids of Egypt,
they used to organize a one day journey. We would
get off the ship at one end, be taken through
Cairo where we could see the museum, to
the pyramids of Egypt, the Sphinx and all that...
and they would bring us back and put us on boat,
the ship at the other end of the Suez Canal, right.
So, we were taken and had the pleasure of
seeing the Sphinx, a short ride over a camel in the desert,
and also, going down one of the pyramids;
this is one of the interesting things there.
So, we were brought back after that and
when we are reached Suez, unfortunately,
the agent had taken too much time,
so, the main ship was already in motion.
So, we were on a motor launch and
they were telling us, "from the motor launch
you can climb up to the ship,
the ship will throw you a rope ladder."
So, the ship was moving, the motor launch was
moving alongside and a rope ladder was
thrown and underneath, if you have missed,
you are there in the Suez Canal.
So, all other people preceded me, and I was the very last person
Yeah to climb up the rope ladder.
Okay. Somehow, I came up in one whole piece into the ship.
So, from there we went all the way. They stop for a day in
Naples and from Naples you could see Vesuvius at a distance.
Wow. Yeah.
After, then, we dropped off at Genoa,
from Genoa, I had to take the train.
Now, what happened was, when we were on board
the ship, there was another confusion which arose -
there was an instruction from the Indian Embassy
that, we should not have anywhere else except to go
to our respective places where we could get language training.
All of us were not getting at the same place, at different places.
The ships' captain, who had earlier told us that
he had our ticket to Bonn, came
and said, "your tickets have been changed."
He mentioned me the name of a small town which
I had not even heard, there is a ticket which you are going to get.
I told him, "this is not my understanding, because
the registrar at IIT Madras told me to go to Bonn,
I have to follow only his instructions.
The captain was very angry, you are giving me a lot of work now,
I said, "go back,
I had asked you to book my ticket to Bonn, I will go to Bonn."
So, we got off, we took the train.
Now, they had another bit of experience. When our
train was passing through Switzerland,
we were brought down at midnight at Switzerland because,
by the Swiss police, on doubts that our passports were bogus. Okay.
All of us, 6 or 8, they brought us down from the train,
they checked our passports. By the time they
found out that the passports were genuine, the train had already left.
I had already told the education officer that
we are coming by this train, we were to reach on a Sunday.
So, when we finally took another train and reached
Bonn, there was nobody to receive us.
I didn’t know a word of German, none of us knew,
we didn’t know where to go. Then, someone who knew
the area came, he was good enough, a good samaritan,
he said, "I will telephone
Dr. Baliga, the name of the education officer.
He telephoned. When the education officer came,
he was very wild with us, "why did you come?"
I said, "I had been told by the registrar to come to Bonn."
"I had already given instructions, you should go to other places, you know, go."
He immediately brought us tickets and
said, "two of you will go, four of you will go here,
two of you will go there," like that.
So, from there I went to the place where I learnt German.
So, that is a very very small village called Blaubeuren.
Its population was only 4000.
Now, the Goethe Institute had deliberately selected
these places because they wanted
the people who want to learn the language, to go to
a place where no one speaks any language other than German. Any language other than German.
It is just like throwing a baby into the water to learn swimming.
I remember, sir, when I was in Japan my teacher used to teach
Japanese without using any other language. Exactly.
He says, "you should learn a language through that language only." Through, exactly.
Not through some other language. Exactly, exactly.
You are right.
So, now, this was actually the peak of winter. Actually,
December 1st I started,
there was snow and my accommodation was on top of a mount.
So, when I used to come down, I used to slip on the snow.
Oftentimes, my book will go
in one direction, I will go in another direction.
The classes used to start with morning breakfast at 7 o' clock,
along with the teachers, complete classes,
then lunch along with the teachers, because food habits were different.
There were some who were vegetarian, there were
some who wouldn’t take beef and all, among our students.
So, in a small place like that, you had to make special
arrangements. They would go with us and after lunch, back to class,
classes till the evening.
In Germany, you have a very early dinner 6 o’clock
back, dinner, and then homework.
So, this. Very hardwork.
Yes, but this was really very good because,
I didn’t know a word of German when I first went there,
but within 10 days I could manage. That was the level of
the training at the...as Professor Murthy correctly point
out, one of our teachers once wanted to give the
meaning for the word 'fallen.' 'Fallen' in German
means to fall in English.
There were people who didn’t know English also
in those places. And actually went, he actually went
upon on top of a table and fell down,
he said, "this is 'fallen.'"
So, that was very good and we were particularly
happy to note that there were people from various
countries there and the first thing which gave us
confidence was that Professor Ramanujam and myself
were continuously on the top of the class,
to such an extent that when we finished the first two courses,
we were required to finish only the first two courses,
we were continuously getting the 'Sehr Gut' note, that’s the
highest note that they would give, they offered only for the
two of us the option you could take the middle course,
middle course, the double promotion, you could take the next one.
Now, I didn’t want to take it because
I was not too sure what note I would get.
So, I told them, "I have been all along getting the highest note,
but you ask me to take a bigger examination,
I am not sure." They said, "it's up to you,
but we are sure you will clear it,
but whether you will get the highest note, we don't know."
I said, "I will go along with the usual one." Professor Ramajunam
took the higher examination
and cleared it.
We were the only two people who were offered that kind of option.
So, following that I went to the University of Aachen
and very...started work on the stacking port parameter studies.
Now, it was when I was there
that I came to hear that Professor E. G. Ramachandran
had taken over as the
first professor and head of the department here.
Now, while at University of Aachen, I had a boss
whom I will remember as one of, probably, the
finest persons I have ever met.
What should I say? He was more than a gentleman.
I found him a nobleman, he was extraordinarily kind to me,
extraordinarily kind, considerate.
So, I was very happy to work under him.
And therefore, I also took advantage. Sometimes,
I would go on the journey. I as a doctorate student,
he gave me the privilege of having some
Diplomarbiet students. People were doing the diploma
in Germany, which is equivalent to the master's degree in Germany.
They had also do a project work.
So, that could be a part of my project work and he said,
"you can pass it on to them."
So, I used pass on some work to them and take off myself,
to look around France, here, there, the places, like that.
So, one of the things I want to mention to you again,
which is part of what you have mentioned here was,
a camping trip I undertook all the way to the North Cape.
The North Cape is the northernmost point of Europe;
northernmost point of Europe. I am referring to the year 1961.
So, there was a German colleague and his fiancé,
and myself. There was a German Dauphine, a
Renault Dauphine car; I had taken my driving licence in Germany.
So, rented through to drive.
And, my other friend was also entitled to drive.
So, the two of us we went camping.
So, we had take tent accommodation with us,
we had to cook all this, because it involved a
round trip of 8000 kilometres
to be completed in 30 days, less than 30 days.
And, we were not so rich that we could afford more than 800 marks;
the old currency in the days those days was the
German mark. In those days, the German mark was
about one and a quarter Indian Rupee.
That was...that was all we could afford.
So, we could go only by camping.
So, we did take a car and I told him that,
"I would prefer to take the highway, it's easier for me to drive,
you take the city driving, I was like..." Was there any the speed limits those days?
People say, Germany is the place where
there are no speed limits, okay?
What about those days?
Yeah, actually I will mention this to you, when we were...
I remember, '96, my host drove me. Yeah.
A car at 250 kilometres per hour. Yes.
Until I saw the speedometer, I cant make out that it is actually 250. Yeah it.
So, it was.
Auto ball It was Autobahn., So smooth drive. Autobahn.
And, if it is Mercedes, you will never feel it.
They will say, they will always say, "the Mercedes engine is
absolutely silent, at whatever speed you will go."
Yeah. Now, I want to mention about the speed in some other connection,
I had mentioned this earlier.
It's a very small car, it could not go very much beyond
90 or 100 kilometres, the small car only.
So, we had taken this car and we were at...there is
camping places, all over Europe you have that. In the evening,
we will get down, pitch our tent over there, cook
on a small kerosene stove heat and then, take a look and go around.
So, we went through-through Germany,
then into Denmark and then, from there into
Sweden, and then, from there into Norway.
In the upper regions of Norway, you have the lap...laps there,
Lapland and then, from there, you go to the North Cape,
which are the northernmost point there.
Now, driving in those regions is, was extremely
dangerous in those days. Although we went in July,
there was still some snow over there and believe me,
the width of a road was probably half this, that
you are seeing. Only one car would pass. On one side was an abysmal fall.
On the other side, were mountains with lot of
crags, that kind of thing, we could easily pick up a
scratch and all that on the car; you have to be very careful.
Now, when I was driving there, at that time,
I negotiated a curve at, what you today say was not a
very high speed, somewhere between 80 and 90 kilometres.
For some unknown reason, the car sprang away from
the road, crossed a ditch. Fortunately, where we were
going, there was little expanse, jumped along the ditch,
and came, fortunately, rightside up on the other side.
That shook us to no end,
but, we came out in one whole piece, we got out.
Now, there was a ditch and there was a road here.
So, the the problem was, how to get the car across a ditch?
Yeah, yeah.
Fortunately, it was a small car and there were
friendly passersby. They halted their car, hefty chaps,
all of them physically lifted the car
and brought it back. I mention this for that speed only.
Because, there were regions there,
where you could not really go too fast.
Norway, in those days, were
not so rich, they had not struck oil in those days.
So, in the summer when we went, there used to be
terrible stench of fish, because they would be
drying fish all the way around the river.
So, we went all the way to the North Cape.
On the way, I could read a newspaper at 2 o' clock
in the night, because the it was land of the midnight sun.
It was still so bright.
So, I reached there, and there is a very small shop there, and
then, the North Cape itself is nothing more than
just a stone and then, an arrow pointing towards a North Pole.
From that point onwards, it's water. Okay.
So, I went there and they had a
small register in which the names of all people
Who? who had come from
various countries that entered. Entered.
I thumbed through it, maybe, I did not look into it carefully,
but, I did not see any other Indian name
before my...was very happy.
One of the first Indian to land there.
I don’t know.
May...maybe it's not correct, there could have been other people.
I said one of... I might not have seen it.
One of the person... I might not have seen it.
So, we came back, but what you mentioned.
We had another problem language problem.
When we were coming down through Finland,
Finnish and Hungarian belong to a different group of languages.
These have nothing to do with Indo-
German languages, absolutely different.
The other languages are not far about. For example,
in Swedish, the word for bread is Broder,
It is Brot in German, Brod in Swedish;
you could somehow get along, but when you coming to Finland,
absolutely, the language is totally different, only sign language.
But, we managed to somehow come. Then,
we completed all the, the entire journey, 8000 kilometres
in 30 days and we reached Aachen. And, the cost including
repairs to the car, each of us paid only 800 marks. Wow.
So, that was one of the interesting... So, you could
I undertook in 1963 .
What aspects of metallurgy you have, kind of, got
the expertise during your stay in Germany?
Well, actually I was mentioned,
I concentrated well, I did go and attend classes.
Stacking falls, you mentioned. Yeah, my area which I concentrated,
but I attended lectures also, in other areas - extraction metallurgy,
general physical metallurgy and all that, they were not very different.
But, you were also allowed to operate some machines, for example, microscope?. Yeah!
X-ray diffractometer was the first thing. It like,
the whole thing was...what should I say...
very, looked like predestined and all that. Okay.
When I went to that place, my boss had just ordered
for an X-ray diffractometer, he had not worked on that himself. Okay.
And, he had nobody to work with it. Alright.
But, with my background under Professor G. N. Ramachandran,
I was familiar. The still...the diffractometer was new at that time there.
So, I started working with that.
There was an electron microscope there.
Yeah, that’s what I wanted to know whether you would have...
Misses Butanuth, was a lady.
She also came here later on,
she didn’t stay long enough here. Mrs. Edith Butanuth.
That was the electron microscope,
but, those..those days, you know, we couldn’t go and touch
or operate any of those.
Whereas, the as far as the X-ray laboratory was concerned, everything..
in fact, we had also got an x-ray fluorescence spectrometer,
at that time.
My boss asked me, "can you look after both of these?"
I said, "no, that’s not possible."
So, it was, later on, passed on to a Hungarian colleague.
So, I stuck only to this,
I used to don’t only my studies concerned with the X ray diffraction, but
there were people coming from other...
who wanted x-ray diffraction pictures taken.
So, I used to do their work also,
but, I did attend lectures in other subjects also.
Well, I had to mention this...the
this standard was not very different from what-from what,
You are want here.
It was there at, maybe, at one or two places,
it might have been a little deeper, that’s all.
19... '63 you returned here.
'63 I returned. This time, I took a cargo boat,
because, I had a lot of luggage with me. Okay.
So, I couldn’t come, so I.
I bargained with Mrs. Marga Schmitz of DAAD.
She said, "I will pay only the fare for a normal boat,
you pay the extra difference." I said, "Okay."
I took a cargo boat. And so, we had a very interesting journey.
While we were coming back, we passed by the side of Italy.
Some of you have might have heard of this name of the cinema
Stromboli in which Ingrid Bergman starred.
Stromboli is the name of a volcano, still active.
Still active, and our boat was just
passing by this side of Stromboli.
It has got a...it's a volcano, you know?"
And, the crater mouth is like this...
So, in the night, we could still see red hot lava flowing down.
There were fishermen on the other side.
So, in the night, it was a beautiful sight as our ship was coming,
to see an active volcano in operation.
Then, from there we came
under the monsoon quarters somewhere.
So, this is very interesting because the ship was oscillating violently.
Now, in a cargo boat, passenger accommodation is like first class accommodation.
Okay. So, I had a cabin all to myself.
Now, it was some kind of a, what they call Klappbett in German,
folding bed, and there was a ring on the wall;
this was to allow for the fact
that you dont fall down during tossing of the ship.
So, I had to hook my hand
through the ring on the wall, so I should not fall down.
It was really oscillating by about,
a minimum of 45 to 50 degrees.
Oh. Because you are in the middle of a monsoon.
The more embarrassing thing was that,
when I came down for lunch, we were only a few people.
So, we were sitting like this, you know, our plates were all there.
So, when the ship was taking a toss,
I was often seen eating out of my neighbours plate,
so, of course, which displeased him.
So, I reached India back
in late July 1963 and joined duty on 1st August 1963.
We were all put up in a few rooms in the metallurgy workshop,
the MSB was not yet completed.
Professor Ramachandran was sitting on top, we were also sitting over there.
My colleagues at that time,
Dr. T. Ramachandran had already retired; Professor L. S. Dasgupta,
and Mr. Ramakrishna Iyer,
who was there at that time; Ragunatha Rao,
he was also there; there was one Venkataraman.
So, far as it's not too many people.
So, metallurgy was all in one building, the workshop.
Practically there only.
So, the... The crates were still being opened.
forming did not come up.
No, the crates were still being opened, you won’t believe it,
the very first batch which graduated out of IIT Madras in 1964,
they graduated in the year January not in July because,
following the Chinese invasion
there was an acceleration of the courses. Okay.
And, all the courses are required to be complete by January.
So, with the effect that, the very first batch graduated
without ever having taken a peak
into an optical microscope.
Oh not even. The crates were still being... the crates were still being opened.
Okay. The crates...and unfortunately the
the Metallurgy department was planned by
a few people who belonged to mechanical engineering.
So, they were not all really familiar.
Okay. So, we did not get the kind of equipment we needed.
The only X-ray unit we got was the outmoded ciphered x-ray unit,
An unstabilised unit, 57.3 millimetre camera.
That was all that we had on the camera.
You couldn’t do any kind of research work with that kind of thing.
So, I felt really lost.
After cosming back here,
I couldn’t do any work in the area of x-ray diffraction
until we got the X-ray defractometer.
This we got, thanks to Dr. A. Ramachandran.
Dr. A. Ramachandran came as a breath of fresh air. 1968,
he brought research into IIT, at that time.
So, we were to get some x-ray facilities
and I had gone on a Humboldt.
So, I was one of the first go on a Humboldt, myself and
the Professor B. V. Rao from IIT Madras.
So, Professor Ramachandran knew
about this I was working in x-ray diffraction.
When I came back in 1969, he said,
"we have an arrangement with Germany,
about two hundred thousand
German marks worth of equipment to come.
But, we want to have a centralized facility because, you can use it,
metallurgy, chemistry, can use it,
physics can use it, we cannot have separate.
So, we will have one central x-ray facility."
So, our Central XRD came that way.
Right, came that way.
So, he asked me, "you plan it out."
Okay. So, I planned out.
So, this was '69 - '70. '69 - '70.
But, the equipment had not yet come, Okay.
we had to place an order.
Professor Zeurn had come from Germany,
he was helping us in getting all this equipment.
So, we had planned this kind of thing,
I had worked with the Philips unit there,
So, I said, "I prefer Philips unit, Philips diffractometer"
Professor Zeurn helped us, otherwise we might have got other units.
So, he constituted a committee of which I was the convenor.
And, there was Professor Aravamudhan of Chemistry,
Professor Ramanamurthi of Physics, these were my other two people,
this was a... and myself as a convenor.
Now, he said, "you have to get it started and going immediately on its arrival."
By the time we came to know that everything has been
shipped, it was '73 January, also it was coming...no place.
So, the faculty association was, those days,
located in those small rooms,
where we now have a Central XRD lab.
So, we requested that they vacate to another place,
and otherwise, construction would have taken more time.
Okay. And, we had do it.
So, the equipment landed in Madras port,
and the Philips people were very helpful
and within 1 month flat
of the equipment landing in Madras port,
we had the laboratory going.
Completely. Completely.
X-ray diffractometer and then, small scale, small angle scattering
and, you know, other associated things also going and...
But then, were there any efforts to do texture those days, x-ray texture?
No, at that time what happened was,
I was not actually in the area of texture. Texture.
I understand, Mrs. Mahalakshmi Seshasayee, later on also, was working on texture.
Dr. T. Ramachandran was working on texture. Okay. Earlier.
Yeah, yeah. But, he was not here at the time, when this came.
I think we did get some attachments, I am not too sure about that.
But primarily, the interest was in powder diffraction. Powder diffraction.
Ozone powder diffraction. I understand.
So, this was the main thing.
So, professor... I got excellent cooperation from
Dr. Aravamudhan and Dr. Ramanamurthi,
both of them they pitched in. But more importantly,
not only did we not have any space for me at that time,
I had to move to whatever space was available,
I had no staff, nobody, nothing.
Get started working, I was one man who was trained in that area.
So, at that time, I had the great good fortune
of getting two outstanding students;
one was Professor Kesavan Nair. Oh! Okay.
Who graduated from IIT,
And was my MS student also,
and there is Dr. Pathiraj, who is now in Holland. Okay.
These two people joined me at the right time.
Professor A. Ramachandran told me that,
"I want the laboratory to function; function means function."
so. When I actually joined here in 2004, Professor Nair was not there,
So, I was made XRD incharge.
So, I was central XRD incharge for some time.
So, what we did was, we also agreed that no student should be turned back.
So, Dr. Kesavan Nair, who started working,
that time, fortunately, we also had the service of
Professor Macherauch from Germany.
Professor Macherauch, is a very well known person
in the area of residual stress analysis,
,that’s how we started under residual stress. Yeah, sure.
He came for a one month stay here.
So, he came to our XRD laboratory,
at the same time, Nair was there, Prathiraj was there.
So, he instructed, he personally used to spend time here, night and day,
and set up the facility, trained them and all that.
Subsequently, residual stress measurements from here, passed on to BHEL.
Building Research Institute. Even now, sir, lot of industries, Ashok Leyland,
and a number of industries come for residual stress analysis.
Yeah, from here, yeah.
After that only, we got the Rigaku.
Rigaku yeah. The x-ray diffraction unit and all that.
Now, Mr. Varadachari joined us, at about that time Yes.
I was alone once again, I had practically no staff.
Varadachari. Nair fortunately, Nair, my MS student,
got the job as an STA. Okay.
That is something. Pathiraj still continuity as a PhD student.
Then, there was one Miss Meenakshi, I dont know if you remember her,
she was loaned to me by Professor Aravamudhan
as a ah technical assistant.
She is, now, in America also.
Then, Chandrashekar was there.
Like birds of passage...and when they left,
I didn't know what to do. I met Professor V. S. Raju,
he said, "I have a man working with me,
do you think you can train him, I have no need for him."
I said, "give him to me." That's how Varadachari joined us. Vardachari came.
He stayed with us and Just about
2 years back he retired.
He left.
So, actually, the laboratory, I must say,
I was in charge and general fashion...
but the real development, I must
openly conceid, was due to Professor
Kesanvan Nair who was my student, and ah Dr. Prathiraj.
Dr. Prathiraj, subsequently went to Holland,
where our work done here was recognised
and Professor Kolster from the University of Twente,
he was taking people from here.
So, Profesor Kesavan Nair had gone there,
I also, was invited twice, he had a centre for advanced physical metallurgy there.
They were working on residual stress.
So, But, that time, did any electron microscope coming to IIT?
Yes, electron microscopy actually had come a
little earlier. Professor Sreenivasa Raghavan was in charge of that.
And, Dr... Any other facility...?
Dr. Butenuth...no these
were the things. The scanning electron microscope
was still coming a little later.
I think Dr. Gokul Rathan subsequently
came too, later, little later.
But, you know, I had my hands full with
XRD itself. XRD, I did not want
anything else. And, I was also getting interested
in some of the areas at - some other areas at that time,
I wanted to go into development and technology.
So, so x-ray diffraction and residual stress analysis is one aspect of it.
Then, I wanted to develop some other
areas also, fairly unfamiliar areas,
because I have always been thinking that there is a great difference between
fashionable science and relevant science.
And, I am a person who
goes in strongly for relevant science, that is where the
the, you must have tangible results,
for whatever money you Correct.
put into it. Correct.
It's my personal point of view that,
if you put into 10 crores of money and then get
3 papers published,
however, exalted the journal...
Maybe, it's my personal view, I am wrong,
it's possible, but it's my personal view.
I personally believe that, rather than that,
if you can spend doing some work
on improving any aspect of technology by 10 percent,
guaranteed 10 percent,
with a marginal input of money, public money,
that is really, the kind of
development meant for this country. Anyway, this is a personal opinion.
Okay, to come back to our thing.
So, 1968, we started our postgraduate
programme in metallurgy. That was the first
postgraduate programme was physical metallurgy,
1968, we started.
Year after that, Professor E. G. R.
was always very keen on industrial metallurgy.
So, he said, "physical metallurgy we are there, for industrial
metallurgy, we will get the people from Germany."
So, Professor Zeurn came in for welding,
there was one Professor Bandow who also came in
for welding, Professor Wagener came for metal forming.
And, there was Dr. Panchanathan, Dr. Roshan etcetera,
Dr. Prabhakar, they were all taking care of foundry.
Foundry, and Prabhakar was also looking
after non-destructive testing at the same time. Non-destructive, correct.
So, this way, it was being developed and
I did feel that the demand for physical metallurgy was
coming down because there was a feeling
among many people that the MTech in
physical metallurgy does not really fetch you jobs.
So, I did try to bring in a practical emphasis to physical metallurgy.
So, bringing in some kind of, you know,
real cases of a courses and fracture analysis,
real case of fracture and things like that.
So, we did change the
ah the title from physical metallurgy to materials technology,
to indicate their support.
So, this is how..
So, when I joined, 2004, I can say
those days casting, I mean casting was
going down, welding, forming and materials technology
was enlarging. Materials technology.
Of course, a big boost came when,
Professor Padmanabhan
joined metal forming. He was
an outstanding person and
today he is going to give, He is going
give the lecture today.
he came from Banaras to join us,
and, it was a very good acquisition by the
department to get Professor Padmanabhan.
So, that's how it started.
So, afterwards, subsequently, I had been making some visits to
Foreign countries periodically.
I was spent a year as a Humboldt fellow,
'68 to '69, I told you. I was
at the Max Planck Institute of Stuttgart,
where the person sitting at the table next
to me was Professor Anantharaman himself.
We were together to take the work under Professor Gerold.
And actually, I had gone to Professor Gerold only as
Professor Anantharaman suggested that.
So, Professor Anantharaman and I were
working together for 1 year at
the Max Planck Institute.
Then, 1977 I was given a Max Planck
Society Senior Fellowship. I went
on a sabbatical, this time to the Max Planck
Institute for metals research
at Dusseldorf. At that time, I did
some work which incidentally
got me a invited membership
into the ICDD. I didn't remember or
know at that time, that this work is going to lead to that.
I was doing it as an aside, actually.
Very different from what I was going to do there.
So, '77 - '78, I was there and I came back.
'82 I again went, this
time there to the Institute for Refractory Research at Bonn.
I wanted to work with my old boss Professor Maddox there.
I was put along with a geologist
but what we had in common was
x-ray diffraction. Okay.
So, we were working with that one.
'87 there was, once again I visit
there was a INSA and KNAW,
KNAW is the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences
and the Indian National Science Academy, there was an exchange programme.
So, he went visiting Holland
because Professor Kolster wanted me to come out,
Professor Kolster had come and visited us here.
He was very impressed and he said, "I want
to take your people here and build up."
He went there and he again, called me in 1989.
I spent 3 months there, at which
time he even asked me to deliver some
lectures to his students,
which I understand, was well received by the students.
So, after that I had...
he had wanted me to come
every year, if possible,
for a few months there, but that wouldn't work out because
we had rules in those days, you know.
I had to spend 3 years, I had to be under a bond here. Okay.
Whenever I used to go, that was not possible.
Nowadays, in principle, every summer you can go if you are
Exactly. willing to.
Exactly. That's possible.
Now, the all this was not possible, in
those days. Yeah, yeah.
So, in 1995, I were superannuated. Okay.
And, at that time, the emeritus fellowship was just
coming in. Not by the IIT,
but the All India Council of Technical Education. Okay.
So, I was one of the first to get that, only for a period of 2 years.
2 years. '95 to '97.
So, in that period of time, I want
to come to this aspect now,
towards the end of my stay, I was getting
interested in the area of developmental technology.
Now, I was always interested to know how
Russians had pulled themselves up with their bootstrap,
they did not have have money enough money
and still, they were doing research work
comparable to what the Americans were doing.
We used to get translations of the
Russian research work here.
So, I used to spend a lot of time in the library here,
looking into the Russian research papers.
What interested me there was,
very often, the papers were very short,
2 pages or 3 pages - this is what we have done and this is the result.
They would not necessarily go into the thermodynamics behind it,
they would not go into the theoretical
studies behind it, this is what you have done
and this is what you have obtained.
I was wondering whether there was anything behind it.
One such thing which interested me
was, this principle underlying the
thermocouple welding gadget,
it is mentioned as an Yasno Bogorodsky effect.
This name Yasno Bogorodsky
is not known anywhere outside of Russia.
It is mentioned in a few Russian books.
The interesting thing is that, this is a
form of electrolysis.
Under certain conditions,
with electrolytes of a specific concentration
and specific voltages, you don't have
the usual kind of electrolytic heating
which is only resistance heating.
The fall of voltage between the anode and cathode
is not uniform there, normally it is uniform.
And, you will find the usual thing, discharge
of hydrogen at the cathode and things like that.
Now, with some electrolytes
and with certain voltage ranges,
you have some kind of a pseudo-anode,
it is not really a metallic anode
building up very close to the cathode.
So, the potential drop
is not uniform, it is very steep. Steep.
Over a small area and then gradual.
This steep is so strong
that it can give rise to a spark discharge
and the spark discharge will produce tremendous heating
at the cathode; tremendous heating at the cathode.
So, the whole idea was,
the right concentration
and the right...I could not get information from the old books here.
At that time, Professor Indiresan had sent me as part of a
Government of India delegation to the then USSR,
for studying corrosion, a joint research in the area of corrosion.
So, we visited several parts of the old USSR.
So, when I was in Moscow,
I requested the people there, those days, you know,
the commissioner, so, everything there,
they could dictate and call a professor like this.
So, I said, "such and such a professors written a book,
I was wondering whether I
could talk to him?"
We will summon him here.
So, he was there.
So, I said what is it
I said, "sir, you have written this..
I have been trying something here, I did not
quite succeed, do you remember?"
"No, no, I got the information somewhere else also,
I dont exactly remember it."
So, I came back,
but then, subsequently a
student working with me here, at that time,
I think, his name was Rajia,
he found out,
after lot of experimentation
one day he just walked into my room and said,
"sir, I have got it."
I couldn’t believe it, there it was.
Then, we immediately thought,
this kind of concentrated heating
in a small area, you will understand,
we could melt copper,
We could melt copper,
under the cathode it will drop down,
and, if you touch the electorate it will be at ambient temperature.
So, almost the entire heat was concentrated now.
Because of this, there was no energy loss. Okay!
So, I got one of my students
Pampa Rao to do actually these
specific measurements in the
electrical engineering department
with regard to power consumption.
We, first of all, took a very large transformer,
that was found to be a wastage.
They said, "this is not necessary, this is not necessary."
You wont believe, it when we finally built
the thermocable building gadget,
it was only 17 watts transformer, just 17 watts.
The time taken for a thermocouple weld
time taken, it was working from a 5 ampere outlet,
please understand,
a welding working from a 5 ampere outlet.
Not heard of ususally! You cant.
We had thermocouple welding gadgets here, imported from there.
The cost of manufacture was only 500 rupees. Wow.
And the cost of one weld
was less than one tenth of one paisa.
There was a time when. Did you did you kind of try to patent?
Yes, yes, yes, we didn’t really get very far,
but, one thing I was very happy about,
at that time, a large number of students
doing research in many places, who wanted to
you know weld thermocouples,
they used to come in large numbers. Our Murugesan,
I dont know if you remember, Oh.
he was a technical assistant.
He was the one who I kept
in charge of this equipment.
There was one Ashokan who was working.. Murugesan
used to handle physical metallurgy
lab Physical metallurgy lab.
he was also in charge of this, I asked him.
There was one Ashokan,
who was working with me and another project with Sri Raman
this another thing which he developed
that was ultrasonic fatigue testing.
This is extremely rapid fatigue testing
which will produce high cycle fatigue
that is more than a million cycles.
The time taken would be only two to three minutes,
because the stretches were generated
by ultrasonic means,
ultrasonic waves or elastic stress waves
and these are a 20,000 cycles per second,
your regular fatigue machine
works at about 50 cycles per minute.
So, you can imagine
a high cycled fatigue testing,
I could complete in a matter of
2 to 3 minutes,
what would take you for months.
The only problem was the power
Power. required for the unit.
We had to have very very small samples.
And, we had to design this,
you could not use the usual barium titanate crystals
that you are using for the normal ultrasonic clearing,
you had to go in and prepare
a special facility with nickel transducer.
I needed a special fine grained
nickel sheet for this
purpose which was given to me by a
friendly professor from England.
So, with Sri Raman, we developed from scratch,
a high cycled fatigue testing machine
the samples used to be only so small.
And, what astonished many people was,
I mean, I will come back to thermo couple welding
agent in a moment,
you would screw the sample
from one end;
the sample will be screwed from one end,
it will be free at the other end,
it is standing vertical...
Please understand it's
screwed at one end,
it is not held at the other end,
it is not held this way,
what is the stress acting on it?
There is no stress
because there is nothing which is pulling it from this side. Okay.
So, you dont even have
a cantilever force because I am not holding it this way.
The whole thing was because we had..
under specific conditions,
we could produce nodes and antinodes.
So, we could produce antinodes at
one portion and node
at the other portion.
We had to concentrate the stresses at the central portion only.
So, in order to get this we had to have only very very
small samples we had took,
but then, the advantage was that
we could fabricate such samples
and, we did demonstrate it to many people,
including Dr. V. Ramachandran
of National Aeronautical Laboratory. Okay.
Many people who would not believe
that fatigue would come out like this,
we showed them, the sample would be held like this
and after about 2 minutes, it would fall down
as if an axe along its neck, right in the middle.
Now, we did enter it for a competition,
I dont want to go into the details behind
that, there was some jealousy
because we didn’t get finally, because
the people who opposed it, opposed us on one score
can you compare the SN cycles
here with the regular SN cycle.
He said, "that’s not the purpose
behind which this is constructed,
please understand why I am doing it,
I don’t know whether its a 1 to 1 correspondence
between ultrasonic fatigue testing
and the normal fatigue testing. Normal fatigue.
But, the results were like this."
Suppose you have a number of options
with regard to a material,
either with regard to welding
or with regard to composition or heat treatment,
the question is,
which is the best option?
So, I said, "if you can do the welding,
according to various
procedures, whatever it is that you think is.. then as
change the composite etcetera...
bring me these samples,
I will check these samples and tell you
which is the optimum among this, which is the best. Okay.
This result will be the same
as what you will get from the other one,
but that will take you months to..."
In this.. This way how we put it,
but, they wouldn’t see it like that.
They said, "unless you are able to
tell us the connection
between the actual SN cycle and this, we wont do it.
This was at the fag end of my stay.
So, I left. I just stayed enough to
connect contact with Sriraman,
who was doing his PhD with me,
to complete that work.
Very other..many other interesting... Some of your students,
where are there now? I mean..
Nobody is there, I am very sorry to say that.
You see, the other people went into other areas also.
This..there are other angles to this.
Actually, even the unit has been dismantled,
I am very sorry because
we did find some other things there.
Martensitic transformations
in austenitic stainless steel,
you dont get it at room temperature.
You will get it only at subsidiary temperatures.
Now, what happens is,
if you, this is with regard to MS,
but you have MD also,
when you go in for defamation,
it will be at higher term. Higher term.
So, the stress for this will have to be very high.
Now, you will understand here,
when there are ultrasonic waves
produced with this kind of power,
my unit had something like, I think,
some like 700 watts power,
not like the barium
titanate which works with about 40 or 50 watts;
tremendous force.
So, if you had a sample like that and dipped it under the water,
it was subjected to cavitation bombardment. Cavitation.
The cavitation bombardment was so high,
that we produced martensite on the surface,
confirmed by x-ray diffraction studies. Okay.
At room temperature At room temperature.
and, above room temperature;
above room temperature.
More interestingly,
subjective correlation, now I am speaking from memory,
22 years ago,
we produced not one, but
two types of martensite.
And, these 2 types of martensite, you know,
when we reheated them,
they vanished at different temperatures.
Another aspect of this was,
because of this tremendous amount of
bombardment in a very thin area,
you could produce surface hardening. Okay.
Shot peening kind of. Shot, like
shot peening.
Like shot peening. Yes, yes.
Over very thin area
only, but the... How people use the word splat..
Yes. Okay,
surface modification. Yeah yeah.
Through this kind of thing
So, this I was a thing, which I felt
we could use for many things.
So, anyway this is one side of it, I still believe that
we could do a lot of work in this area.
One point which I mentioned to them was,
India was getting into missiles,
in those areas.
So, my disagreement with some of these people who,
I said, "look here,
you say ultrasonic fatigue testing has no.."
at least they couldn’t see the importance.
I said, "the missile is flying through space at that speed,
the flutter is there,
are they at 50 cycles,
or are they more likely to be at 20,000 cycles?"
That’s true.
Well it carried no weight.
So, anyway I was stepping down, that
is over, anyway..
these are all the areas where I want to get in.
Interesting. Another I...
another point I want to mention, similarly this RPM,
the electrolytic heating,
you will understand,
you could produce the induction heating in steel,
but then, only steel
which is ferromagnetic. Yeah.
Above the Curie Temperature, Correct.
steel cannot be heated,
then, only gets heated through conduction. Correct.
So, the initial heating at the surface
is only until you come to the Curie Temperature,
not thereafter.
After that, it's only heating from the bottom. Okay.
Now, this could heat..
this is not dependent
on the ferromagnetic effects.
So, not depending on, you could also heat aluminium.
But, it has to be a conducting material.
It had to be a metal.
Correct, metal. It had to be a metal.
It has to be a metal. It had to be a metal.
Cannot be a... Please understand
the beauty behind this.
We produced with two pieces of wire,
close to each other, copper and zinc.
The idea was, as I told you,
there is a very thin film of hydrogen surrounding it.
This film of hydrogen is also a sheath,
is also the cause for the heating.
So, when we melt it and we produce separately,
please understand, from a single container
separate nuggets of molten copper and zinc not brass.
Wow, wow. Not a nugget of brass,
separate. Now, what I felt was at that time,
I barely felt that, this required development,
there is a lot of wastage going on in the metallurgy workshop.
Generally any workshop,
they file things rings fall down,
copper, aluminium, steel, all of them.
If its possible for us to build a gadget
whereby these could be remelted
and obtained in the form of small nodules,
you could use them in the foundries
for additions. Now, this is a place where
you could melt them from the same container,
and get them as separate things,
only you need a gun.
So, we did also make a gun at that time.
There was one boy called Mohan who fabricated it,
he passed away in USA later.
And, you believe me or not,
we did have a gun,
and we bored through white cast iron.
White cast iron, without producing cracks.
We produced three holes Very..
next to each other because,
the heating was severely confined to that area. Okay.
There were some problems,
the area, in all these cases,
the anode to cathode area is very critical,
you must have a very large anode area
compared to your cathode area.
So, if it's thermocouple weighting gadget, no problem,
my anode was the container itself,
the cup. So, I got over it easily.
But while boring, you dont have this.
So, I was really thinking
that, what you needed was actually a spiral anode.
We didn’t do it finally,
but I do believe that if you do that one
it should be possible for us to bore through
very hard metals,
and also...these are all areas where it could go.
I mean physical metallurgstic doing a lot of applied...
I was interested. Engineering
It is amazing, which is not usual, There was.
I should say.
No, I should. Being a physical metallurical myself,
I can say this. See, based on this
I cannot produce a paper
which will come in any of the exalted journals.
But these are applications. ...we will research for a while?
The proof we are putting is in the eating.
You are right, sir,
I can agree with you.
One other..one other, let me just
mention these, two other things which I want to..
These are two areas
in which I still believe work can be done, if
only, thing is we need the combined efforts
of a mechanical engineer, Mechanical engieer.
a design engineer...
Am I overshooting my time?
Please tell me if I am... You go ahead.
A design engineer,
an electronics engineer, and all that. If you do that,
you can produce unique gadgets in this country.
Because our thermocouple welding gadget is not
paralleled by anything else outside.
There was one gadget which was
brought from America, working under..
which was costing about
20 times our gadget
and could not do any better than our gadget;
you can produce cheap ones.
This and also, you can develop it in many ways.
Ultrasonic fatigue testing, I believe,
is something which we can also develop.
Then, the third, next thing I want to mention was,
the effect of coatings.
I had noticed from East German and Russian journals
that there are certain coatings,
once again, not every coating,
which have a tremendous effect
on fatigue crack and fatigue crack propagation.
So, we did a lot of work with regard to many coatings
and we did find that some of the coatings which people are using
for paints, some of these,
have a very strong effect on crack propagation.
So, we were able to identify one or two
resins and paints
which could really, you know,
this we actually tried in our auto workshop.
They sent springs to me.
In our house, my wife and I
used to clean the leave springs.
I quote this and I have a
a letter from Mr...late Mr. Kumar,
who was the workshop superident here
saying, "sir, thank you very much,
the life of our buses
has now increased by at least 50 percent,
Wow. and our jeeps."
One to two. Now, the only thing was,
these lessons have got a very short life.
So, what you should do is
you must have, you can use this in a place, you know,
where there are large number of units to be treated.
For example, like..
like a, like a lorry production place or something like that.
All that it requires is,
it will not cost you more than 50 paise or 1 rupees if you applied,
but the minimum guaranteed life,
with specific coatings can be at least,
50 percent. read it along with the down time,
when a bus breaks down.. Bus breaks down.
this you can do within 1 rupee. 1 rupee. 1 rupee.
With an 1 rupee you can do it.
This is once again an idea which I got,
once again by going through
old Russian and East German journals. Germans and Russians were really..
They really. clean.
But then, the only thing was..
if you had said
simply this result to an american journalist,
it would have been turned back saying,
"tell us the reason why this is happening,
Workout the thermodynamics behind this" and all that...
They were not satisfied with the results only.
So, I was then I was saying, finally, about kidney stones.
So, Professor Keshava Nair had a kidney stone. Okay.
And, at that time, there was a doctor here.
He came and said, "kidney stones ah sir?"
he while he used to come to our XRD lab,
he was a good friend of Keshavan Nair.
So, we were talking, he said,
"sir, kidney stones depend very much
on heredity,
on food habits and all that."
A first generation,
Japanese-American
and a second generation Japanese-American
and a third generation Japanese-American,
they would all have the same this thing.
So, for each place, you need a data bank,
for treatment, because
we have this mistake
that we treat our patients here for all diseases
in the same way as we treat foreign patients.
Now, if this depends on a genetic trait,
I don’t know whether it is strictly correct.
So, we want to first of all find out,
there are various kinds of kidney stones..
the most common
are of course, the calcium oxalate stones
then, after that, there are the uric acid stones.
Speaking to our doctors over here,
I found out all kinds of things
which could be present in kidney stone.
And, we had at that time, the... So,
x-ray are We had the... we had the...on those books.
I had the x-ray diffraction pattern there, and I had one student there,
who although worked with me on electrolysis,
he was wizard in computer programmes.
So, I caused him to work out a software,
we have a copyright of the software.
So, the main problem here is this,
you see, you never have a single face,
what happens is, it could be a combination,
it could be calcium oxalate some proportion,
uric acid some proportion and all that..
now, it is like, for example, identifying a criminal
from his thumbprint. Thumbprint.
Now, if there is only one, there is no problem.
If 10 people are going to put, that’s a problem.
Now, therefore, we had all the patterns.
So, I asked him to work out a software,
whereby we could eliminate it and we had it. Eliminate it.
and we could really identify
and we did prepare this
and, I did at that time, I was approached
by the local doctors,
general hospital Madras
and also from Pondicherry...
they wanted to joint research programme to be started.
Unfortunately, the authorities then said,
"unless they pitch in with the funds,
we dont want to join into this."
I said, "look here, they are treating poor patients,
they dont have the money,
lets join into the.." then he said, "we will have joint guidance.
We want from you and we will
you knowm all these things, you know, it needed cooperation..
In the kidney stone, when the doctor operates
he throws away a kidney stone,
that’s not correct,
you should take it and keep it because,
you should find out the food habits of the patient. Correct.
All these things. So, you must keep it with you.
People usually do chemical analysis,
that’s a problem
because, there are many allotropic modifications
of the same chemical formula
chemisty cannot differentiate.
By XRD, we could do this one.
We did find
and we had a collaboration with the doctor from trivandrum,
99 percent of chemical analysis under XRD,
absolutely they overlap..
and in the remaining 1 percent I told him,
"your chemical analysis is wrong."
I go by XRD data.
So, now, we want to prepare a data bank,
we could not prepare the data bank.
This is only for kidney stones; Kidney stones
are always very highly crystallised.
You know, their kidney stone patterns are very sharp,
there is no problem.
But then, when you come to gallbladder stones,
these are not very well crystallised.
So, you usually get a very broad pattern.
Now, identifying them is a little difficult.
I think, if one gets into rietveld analysis..
One. for our software programme,
we didn’t have the rietveld analysis built in.
If you do that,
if you study the gallbladder stones which are not nearly
as well crystallized as kidney stones,
as well as other deposits,
I believe, this would be an area where we can go
finally, archaeometallurgy. Any any other aspects of
you are stay at IIT Madras you want to recollect?
For example, your relations with the students. Yes,
yes, I will tell you one thing. Campus life
exams. I enjoyed my life with the students.
And, I have no hesitation in stating
that, I have often learnt from my students.
I have often learnt from my students.
It's always true.
I went after about 20 - 25 years of service,
I was once asked to give lectures
on material science,
to electrical and electronic engineering students because,
nobody else wanted to take that course.
K. J. L. Iyer forced me to take that one..
that was a large part of theory of metals and things like that.
How was campus those days
when compared to the campus now?
Yes, there were, you know,
far fewer buildings than you have now. Okay.
There was a far greater,
larger share of nature itself at that time,
and all of us, as I was telling, many of us had gardens
in our houses.
So, we used to have garden competition and
you know. . When water scarcity
has now, created a problem while gardening. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah. Fewer vehicles also, in those days and..
By and large, you know, it's very very beautiful campus.
I can only put it like this,
if I have the option
to relive my life all over again,
I would like to serve again at IIT Madras. Come back.
thank you very much.
Professor Swamy, you wanted to say anything?
Excuse me, I just wanted clarification,
you know, we..
the metallurgy department was involved in teaching
BA Metallurgy to students of Anna... Yes, yes.
Madras University. Yes, yes.
Do you remember? Yes.
Did you teach any course, like '70 - '71? Yes yes yes yes.
Okay. I used to go there because
Dr. Kulandaiswamy was at that time, dean there. Yeah, yeah.
Dr. Kulandaiwamy was at that time dean
and, I was asked to go and deliver some lectures over there. Yeah.
I also, that’s why another thing is
your brother-in-law Tathacharya.
No, brother-in-law, Tathacharya, yes.
And, he was a member of the senate also,
was he a visiting professor,
your brother-in-law, Tathacharya? No, he came only for a short time.
No, no, was it for one, but he was a member at senate,
so, persons in, Right right.
did he work on anything called Kirlian photography?
Yes, yes.
Kirlian photography that’s something which,
I dont know how many of you..
you see, Kirlian photography
borders on the arcane -
can life exist
after some part is cut?
This Kirlian photography, he did demonstrate.
If the Electric Engineering department..
experiment is like this - a leaf is there,
Yeah. The leaf is excised,
a part of it is excised and cut off,
and then, this was done in our
Electric Engineering department.
Electrical radiation cast a shadow there of
including the part
which had been cut off. Oh.
It was also visible. Did this make use of
the electron microscope or how did he do? Yes.
Electron microscope which. But, I dont know the full details,
I know about this particular thing, this Kirlian,
this create a lot of sensation at that time, including the
governor of the Raj Bhavan, he was interested.
He called him,
he said, "I was interested in seeing this." Okay.
But, this was really the case,
even after a thing ceases to exist,
certain kinds of radiations can detect the absence.
Okay. In fact, why I am asking you is, I told Professor Murty also, Yeah yeah.
A doctor, Neurophysician in Medical College,
had tried to make use of this
technique in order to find out even the people who were Yes.
buried as Jivasamadhis. Jivasamadhis, they were trying to investigate. Yeah.
Actually Professor Tathachari, went back to America afterwards, So, I can.
he was very much interested in Kirlian photography, but
he was also great scholar in Sanskrit and many other things,
all sides, biophysics also..
he was a close student of Professor G. N. Ramachandran. Yeah.
He was a professor at MIT,
he was a professor at Stanford,
he contracted cancer and then, finally, he passed away.
and, he was working in this area, you are right.
Kirlian photography the... Okay. photograph was taken here,
in the Electric Engineering department
in the short time, yeah, yeah. I see, in photography said like you.
Having mentioned that, one thing I forgot to mention is,
my interest in archaeometallurgy.
I mentioned to you, India is a country where, you know,
we have iron and steel going back to periods
when the westerners were not aware of this. Correct.
And, I still believe that,
there is a lot of scope for doing
your work on archaeometallurgy here.
I'm mentioning this because, one of my students
did go to the Kodachadri hills.
At Kodachadri hills, there is a small pillar,
it was supposed to be made out of iron.
Going there is very difficult.
He told me, he went by bus,
and then he went by walk,
and he is lived under a tree,
chopped a little bit of that, came, we analysed in our laboratory.
The purity of iron was 99.5 percent.
99.5 percent iron,
2000 years back. In a piece..in a piece of pillar where,
the annual rainfall was 650 to 700 centimetres, a year.
And, we don't have radiocarbon dating,
so, we cannot tell the
how. exact date of the..
shoulb be a few centuries, at least, yeah true true true.
old. But, where we were lacking
in those days, we had done also some work,
we did not have the support of radiocarbon dating
nor thermoluminescence stating.
If we do this, at Melsiruvallur
and at other places in South India,
there are many things,
which go back easily to a 1000 year and more than that.
We could do a great deal of work
and I think, we should start archaeometallurgy.
At least, to respect our forefathers. I think.
Who were, you know...
actually, Konasamudram was the
place from which the Damascian steel went,
who made a Damascus blades and all that.
Sir, before we close,
any message that you would like to give to the
younger generations?
Well, I really dont know whether I am
qualified to give any message. I find
the younger generation also
you know, they have got much more knowledge than what I have.
The knowledge which I have is very small,
compared to the knowledge. To be, to be honest..
the kind of passion that you people had,
I think, that is something which is missing.
Maybe, they have knowledge,
they have information available,
but, but, the fire to do something is...
All I..all I want to mention was that
Try to try to. Do try to get into the area of
developmental technology.
All I mention is, this is something
which is an article of faith with me.
Do try to work with a small amount of capital,
and, try to see if you can produce definite,
that should not be arbitrary..definite results.
If you are able to produce
a 10 percent guaranteed Yeah.
improvement
n the performance of any product, Improvement.
after, let us say, investing
a few thousand or a few lacks of rupees on it,
it is worth it.
So, do go into it, there are a lot of, you know, all around you, Sure sure.
areas are available for research. Available.
And, we do a lot of fundamental research,
it's probably very good, I am not denying that. Sure.
But, there should also be a place for
developmental research.
Thank you, sir. Thank you very much.
Wonderful, thanks for coming.
Thank you so much. Thank you sir, thank you.
Okay.
- Contribute
to the Centre -
Monetary
Support 
Digital
Material
