Thus Spake Adam Gilchrist

This cricinfo feature seems to reiterate why the Australians are so successful in their cricket. It is good that young Indian cricketers are exposed to their practices while playing alongside these experienced cricketers like McGrath, Warne, Ponting, Gilchrist and Lee, who excelled during their playing days. They learn unconsciously when they try to keep up with them. The one fact that caught my attention was:

The prolific Rohit Sharma has attributed part of his success to Adam Gilchrist. "He told me not to get swayed by the results, as my job is only to keep performing."

Isn't this what Lord Krishna tells Arjuna in Chapter 3 of the Bhagavad Gita? It might be easier said than done, but Adam Gilchrist is probably practicing it and no wonder he is successful!

There were many other things in this article that had me awe-struck. Ricky Ponting's dedication to fielding, McGrath's attitude to practice, Brett Lee's camaraderie, Shane Warne's acts of encouragement -- hats off to the Australians! They deserve to be on top.

Meeting Bob Wilson

I did attend last week's picnic celebrating Jim Gordon's 80th birthday. I was amazed to see a group of world-class physicists who had come to attend the picnic. They spoke praising Jim Gordon for his exceptional leadership skills. Notable among those who spoke were: Herwig Kogelnik, Arthur Ashkin, Linn Mollenauer. It was inspiring to hear these people say that Jim was just a great colleague and manager, and created a great atmosphere for research. I could imagine the electric atmosphere for research at Bell Labs those days!

The most exciting moment came when Jerry introduced me to Bob Wilson, who won the Nobel prize in Physics for his discovery of cosmic background radiation, that provided the experimental evidence for the Big Bang. "Nice to meet you" he said, as I shook his hand. I immediately started asking him some questions. "Did you build this telescope?" I asked, pointing to the horn antenna behind me. He said, "that horn was already there when I joined". "It's a section of a parabola," he said, pointing to the curvature of the horn antenna.

"Where were the pigeons?" I asked, as I had read the story of pigeons being killed. "Oh! the pigeons are dead! We shot'em. They were in the small chamber and I sent it as far as the campus mail could get". He meant the Whippany campus, when he said "as far". "There was a guy who loved pigeons and we sent it to him. He found that they were junk pigeons and let them free. They came back to the antenna. We finally had to shoot them," he sounded sad.

"Do they pay the Nobel prize money in Swedish currency?" I asked. He said, "Yes! they do. I had to convert to US dollars here. Those days the Nobel prize money was tax-free. Nowadays, it is not." He was apparently 72 years old and he still works in a Radio Astronomy lab at Boston. He was also telling us about the radio telescope they built in Hawaii.

It was great to meet and talk to a Nobel Laureate. They are normal human beings, do not have a great ego. I guess they just work hard to earn their fame!

Inspiration

The final lecture of the WINLAB seminar series was scheduled to be given by Rajiv Laroia (Senior VP, Founder and CTO, Qualcomm Flarion Technologies) today and I decided not to go to Crawford Hill. Jerry Foschini had told me that I should not miss the picnic, but I really wanted to attend Rajiv Laroia's talk. The picnic was to celebrate the 80th birthday of Jim Gordon, who was one of the pioneers in quantum electronics. He used to work in the building and retired a few years ago. His experiment to make the MASER work had dawned the era of quantum electronics.

Jerry called me at 5 PM to ask me if I wanted to discuss a presentation I had to give at Crawford Hill on Thursday. He was very excited about a speech by Charles H. Townes, who was the thesis advisor of Jim Gordon. It is just amazing that Charles Townes, 93, flew a red-eye flight from CA just to attend his student's 80th birthday celebrations at NJ and flew back immediately to CA -- the reason he gave was he had a busy schedule!

Charles Townes won the Nobel prize in Physics in 1964 for his contributions to fundamental work in quantum electronics leading to the development of the maser and laser. Jerry was understandably very excited when he was telling me about Townes's talk. Here are some things he told me over the phone:

When Townes was appointed an associate professor at Columbia University, he was dissuaded by I. I. Rabi and Polykarp Kusch, the then department chair of the Physics department of Columbia University not to pursue his ideas about making an oscillator at longer centimeter wavelengths, where ammonia has intense resonances. Rabi and Kusch were outstanding physicists themselves -- both won the Nobel prize in physics. But as an associate professor, Townes had tenure. A department chairman could not fire him simply because of a disagreement or incompetence. "No," he said. "I think the experiment will work and I am going to continue." Among other people who thought that this experiment will not work were Neils Bohr and John Von Neumann.

Two months later, Jim Gordon rushed into the class that Townes was teaching and excitedly told him, "It's working!". The whole class followed Townes and Gordon to see the demonstration of the maser.

Jerry was really excited that he shook hands with Charles Townes and got to speak to him. I was so inspired at the other end of the line. Here is a great man (well known for his contributions to communications theory) getting inspired by another great man! I surely missed seeing a great scientist. But finally Jerry told, "Chandru, I will treat you for the picnic on Thursday". He made my day!!