B. V. Sreekantan
Badanaval Venkatasubba Sreekantan (30 June 1925- 27 October 2019) was an Indian high-energy astrophysicist and a former associate of Homi J. Bhabha at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR).
Sreekantan hailed from a family of temple priests; he was born to Laxmi Devi and Badanaval Venkata Pandit on 30 June 1925, in the small hamlet of Nanjangud, located in the erstwhile Mysore state (present day Karnataka).
[1] He was the fifth of eight sons and three daughters born to the Pandit couple, whose Telugu speaking ancestors had migrated from Andhra Pradesh to Karnataka.
[2] His experiments served as the base of his doctoral thesis on the intensity and angular distribution of muons at different depths, prepared under the guidance of Homi Bhabha.
[10] A noted Italian experimental physicist, Bruno Rossi of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, examined the thesis and Mumbai University awarded him PhD in 1954.
[1] He also visited Brookhaven National Laboratory and conducted experiments on K-meson decay which resulted in the publication of three scientific papers, jointly written with Herbert S. Bridge and others.
Three X-ray instruments developed by his group were carried on the Astrosat, the first Indian multiwavelength astronomy observatory, which was launched in October 2015.
[11] Sreekantan was known to have furthered the studies of Homi Bhabha and Damodar Dharmananda Kosambi on the lifespan and decay spectrum of muons.
He set up his laboratory using war-surplus goods from World War II procured by TIFR as well as from other sources and with the assistance of H. L. N. Murthy, an expert in glass work, who helped him in the development of Geiger counters, he measured the lifespan of the positive muons as 2.24±0.15 microseconds.
He assisted Homi Bhabha in the installation of two cloud chambers, Rani and Maharani at the cosmic ray laboratory in Ooty in 1954.
[1] He inspired Govind Swarup to prepare the proposal for the establishment of the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) at Khodad, Pune.
[16] Sreekantan was associated with several notable scientific personalities such as Homi Bhabha, M. G. K. Menon, Raja Ramanna, S. Naranan, R. L. Kapur, Ramanath Cowsik, V. S. Narasimham, S. V. Damle and G. S.
[1] He delivered many keynote addresses at national and international conferences,[17] mentored many scientists in their doctoral research and was the author of over 300 scientific papers.
[24][25][note 3] He wrote a monograph on Cosmic Rays : Current Status and Future Directions for Homi Bhabha Fellowships Council (unknown if finished before his death).
