Ranganathan Gregoire Yogeshwar (born 18 May 1959) is a Luxembourgish physicist and science journalist based in Germany. He started gaining attention at the end of the 1980s in the German-speaking area for his science documentaries that were often coupled with critical analysis and prognoses of the societal effects of research in the natural sciences.

Early life and education

Yogeshwar grew up in Bangalore, India and Luxembourg and went to primary school in both places. His father is an Indian engineer and his mother a Luxembourgish art historian. He has a younger sister and a twin brother, Pierre Kalyana Yogeshwar, who is also a physicist. His grandfather was mathematician and librarian

S. R. Ranganathan Shiyali Ramamrita Ranganathan ( 9 August 1892 – 27 September 1972) was a librarian and mathematician from India. His most notable contributions to the field were his five laws of library science and the development of the first major fac ...

, the developer of the colon classification. Growing up, he spoke Luxembourgish, German, French, English, Tamil, Kannada, Hindi and Malayalam (the latter three to communicate with his housekeeper, teacher, and gardener, respectively). Yogeshwar studied music in Luxembourg and obtained his Diplôme de fin d’études secondaires (equivalent to British A-Levels) at the Lycée classique de

Diekirch Diekirch ( lb, Dikrech or (locally) ; from ''Diet-Kirch'', i.e. "people's church") is a commune with town status in north-eastern Luxembourg, capital city of the canton Diekirch and, until its abolition in 2015, the district of Diekirch. The t ...

. He studied at the RWTH Aachen in

Aachen Aachen ( ; ; Aachen dialect: ''Oche'' ; French and traditional English: Aix-la-Chapelle; or ''Aquisgranum''; nl, Aken ; Polish: Akwizgran) is, with around 249,000 inhabitants, the 13th-largest city in North Rhine-Westphalia, and the 28th- ...

, Germany, graduating with a

Diplom A ''Diplom'' (, from grc, δίπλωμα ''diploma'') is an academic degree in the German-speaking countries Germany, Austria, and Switzerland and a similarly named degree in some other European countries including Albania, Bulgaria, Belarus ...

degree in

experimental physics Experimental physics is the category of disciplines and sub-disciplines in the field of physics that are concerned with the observation of physical phenomena and experiments. Methods vary from discipline to discipline, from simple experiments and ...

. He worked at the Swiss Institute for Nuclear Research (SIN), at

CERN The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN (; ; ), is an intergovernmental organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. Established in 1954, it is based in a northwestern suburb of Gene ...

, both in Switzerland and at the Forschungszentrum Jülich in Germany.

Career

In 1983, he started working in radio and television for various stations. During a stay in India in 1985, he led a series of seminars and conferences, including one at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore. Yogeshwar began to work with Jean Pütz at the Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR) in Cologne in 1987 as science editor. Until 1990 he hosted many episodes of the ''Wissenschaftsshow'' alongside Pütz. The WDR developed the show ''Quarks und Co.'' for Yogeshwar, based on the same concept as the ''Wissenschaftsshow'', and he led this show from 1993 to 2018, before handing it over to Mai Thi Nguyen-Kim and Ralph Caspers. From 1989 to 1999, he co-hosted the TV show ''Kopfball''. From 1995 to 2001, he was the acting Head of the Science Programmes division of the WDR, and in 2001, he replaced Alfred Thorwarth as the head of the same division, remaining in that post till 2018. Until 2002, he presented the research and environmental magazine ''Globus'' and the show ''W wie Wissen'' from 2006 to 2007 on ARD. He also moderates the series of events ''Wissenschaft live'' organised by the Deutsches Museum Bonn. Yogeshwar organises parts of the kids radio show ''Lillipuz''.

Personal life

Yogeshwar and his wife Uschi live with their four children in Hennef near Cologne. He is an

atheist Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there no ...

External links

Official channel
on YouTube
Literature from and about Ranga Yogeshwar
in the German National Library
Official website
(in German)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Yogeshwar, Ranga 1959 births Luxembourgian scientists Living people Scientists from Bangalore Luxembourgian television personalities Luxembourgian people of Indian descent Luxembourgian atheists ARD (broadcaster) people People associated with CERN Luxembourgian physicists Luxembourgian twins RWTH Aachen University alumni