Shivaramakrishnan Pancharatnam (9 February 1934 – 28 May 1969) was an Indian physicist who did significant work in the field of optics. He is noted for his discovery of a type of

geometric phase In classical and quantum mechanics, geometric phase is a phase difference acquired over the course of a cycle, when a system is subjected to cyclic adiabatic processes, which results from the geometrical properties of the parameter space of the ...

sometimes known as Pancharatnam phase for polarized beams passing through crystals.

Biography

He was born in

Calcutta Kolkata, also known as Calcutta (List of renamed places in India#West Bengal, its official name until 2001), is the capital and largest city of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of West Bengal. It lies on the eastern ba ...

West Bengal West Bengal (; Bengali language, Bengali: , , abbr. WB) is a States and union territories of India, state in the East India, eastern portion of India. It is situated along the Bay of Bengal, along with a population of over 91 million inhabi ...

India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...

in 1934. His mother, , was C.V. Raman's sister, and his father worked in the Indian Accounts Service. He was elected a Fellow of the

Indian Academy of Sciences The Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore was founded by Indian Physicist and List of Nobel laureates, Nobel Laureate Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman, C. V. Raman, and was registered as a society on 27 April 1934. Inaugurated on 31 July 1934, it ...

at the early age of 25. He was a reader at the Department of studies in Physics,

University of Mysore The University of Mysore is a public state university in Mysore, Karnataka, India. The university was founded during the reign of Maharaja Krishnaraja Wadiyar IV and the premiership of Sir M. Visvesvaraya. The university is recognised by t ...

from 1961–1964. From 1964 until his death in 1969 at the age of 35 he was a Research Fellow of

St Catherine's College, Oxford St Catherine's College (colloquially called St Catz or Catz) is one of the Colleges of the University of Oxford, constituent colleges of the University of Oxford. In 1974, it was also one of the first men's colleges to admit women. It has 528 un ...

, working in association with George William Series. His publications for this period were mainly concerned with the theory of effects found in experiments on

optical pumping Optical pumping is a process in which light is used to raise (or "pump") electrons from a lower energy level in an atom or molecule to a higher one. It is commonly used in laser construction to pump the active laser medium so as to achieve popu ...

, e.g. double refraction in a gas due to spin alignment. Professor Series has written an introduction to the life and work of Pancharatnam. He also prepared, for the

Proceedings of the Royal Society ''Proceedings of the Royal Society'' is the main research journal of the Royal Society. The journal began in 1831 and was split into two series in 1905: * Series A: for papers in physical sciences and mathematics. * Series B: for papers in life s ...

, the last three papers from notes left by Pancharatnam. In 1956, Pancharatnam was studying

interference Interference is the act of interfering, invading, or poaching. Interference may also refer to: Communications * Interference (communication), anything which alters, modifies, or disrupts a message * Adjacent-channel interference, caused by extra ...

figures produced by light waves in

crystal A crystal or crystalline solid is a solid material whose constituents (such as atoms, molecules, or ions) are arranged in a highly ordered microscopic structure, forming a crystal lattice that extends in all directions. In addition, macros ...

plates, under his advisor C. V. Raman, when he discovered the properties of what is now known as the

, and which predated Michael Berry's work on the topic from 1983.

References

External links

* Current Science Vol. 67, No. 4, 25 August 1994 Pancharatnam memorial issue {{DEFAULTSORT:Pancharatnam, S. 1934 births 1969 deaths Chandrasekhar family 20th-century Indian physicists Fellows of the Indian Academy of Sciences Academic staff of the University of Mysore Scientists from Kolkata Indian optical physicists