Timir Datta is an

Indian-American Indian Americans are Americans whose ancestry originates wholly or partly from India. The terms Asian Indian and East Indian are used to avoid confusion with Native Americans in the United States, who are also referred to as "Indians" or "Am ...

physicist A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate cau ...

specializing in high transition temperature

superconductors Superconductivity is a set of physical properties observed in superconductors: materials where electrical resistance vanishes and magnetic fields are expelled from the material. Unlike an ordinary metallic conductor, whose resistance decreases ...

and a professor of physics in the department of Physics and Astronomy at the

University of South Carolina The University of South Carolina (USC, SC, or Carolina) is a Public university, public research university in Columbia, South Carolina, United States. Founded in 1801 as South Carolina College, It is the flagship of the University of South Car ...

, in

Columbia, South Carolina Columbia is the List of capitals in the United States, capital city of the U.S. state of South Carolina. With a population of 136,632 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is List of municipalities in South Carolina, the second-mo ...

Early life and education

Datta grew up in India along with elder brother Jyotirmoy Datta a noted journalist; his father B.N. Dutt a scion of two land owning families from Khulna and Jessore in south central Bengal (British India) was an eminent sugar-refining engineer and on his mother's side a relative of

Michael Madhusudan Dutt Michael Madhusudan Dutt (born Sri Madhusudan Dutta; ; 25 January 1824 – 29 June 1873) was a Bengali poet and playwright. He is considered one of the pioneers of Bengali literature. Early life Madhusudan was born in Sagardari, a villag ...

, the famed poet. He received a master's degree in theoretical plasma physics from

Boston College Boston College (BC) is a private university, private Catholic Jesuits, Jesuit research university in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1863 by the Society of Jesus, a Catholic Religious order (Catholic), religious order, t ...

in 1974 under the direction of Gabor Kalman.G Kalman, T Datta, KI Golden (1975)
Approximation schemes for strongly coupled plasmas
''

Physical Review A ''Physical Review A'' (also known as PRA) is a monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal published by the American Physical Society covering atomic, molecular, and optical physics and quantum information. the editor was Jan M. Rost ( Max Planck ...

'' 12 (3), 1125 Datta also worked at the Jet Propulsion laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, as a pre-doctoral NASA research associate of Robert Somoano. He also collaborated with Carl H. Brans at

Loyola University New Orleans Loyola University New Orleans is a Private university, private Jesuit university in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. Originally established as Loyola College in 1904, the institution was chartered as a university in 1912. It bears the nam ...

on a gravitational problem of frame dragging and worked with

John Perdew John P. Perdew (born August 30, 1943) is a theoretical condensed matter physicist known for his contributions to the fields of solid-state physics and quantum chemistry. His work on density functional theory has led to him being one of the world' ...

on the behavior of charge density waves in

jellium Jellium, also known as the uniform electron gas (UEG) or homogeneous electron gas (HEG), is a quantum mechanical model of interacting free electrons in a solid where the complementary positive charges are not atomic nuclei but instead an idealize ...

. Datta is of

Bengali Bengali or Bengalee, or Bengalese may refer to: *something of, from, or related to Bengal, a large region in South Asia * Bengalis, an ethnic and linguistic group of the region * Bengali language, the language they speak ** Bengali alphabet, the w ...

origin.

Work and research history

Datta was a NSF post-doctoral fellow with Marvin Silver and studied charge propagation in non-crystalline systemsT Datta, M Silver (1981)
Schottky‐barrier profile in a‐silicon alloys
''

Applied Physics Letters ''Applied Physics Letters'' is a weekly peer-reviewed scientific journal that is published by the American Institute of Physics. Its focus is rapid publication and dissemination of new experimental and theoretical papers regarding applications of ...

'' 38 (11), 903-905 at the

University of North Carolina The University of North Carolina is the Public university, public university system for the state of North Carolina. Overseeing the state's 16 public universities and the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics, it is commonly referre ...

in Chapel Hill. At UNC-CH he continued his theoretical interests and worked on retarded Vander Waals potentialT Datta, LH Ford (1981)
Retarded Van der Waals potential between a conducting plane and a polarizable particle
''

Physics Letters A ''Physics Letters'' was a scientific journal published from 1962 to 1966, when it split in two series now published by Elsevier Elsevier ( ) is a Dutch academic publishing company specializing in scientific, technical, and medical content. Its ...

'' 83 (7), 314-316 with L. H. Ford. Since 1982, he has been on the faculty of the University of South Carolina in Columbia. He collaborated with several laboratories involved with the early discoveries of high temperature superconductivity, especially the team at NRL, led by Donald U Gubser and Stuart Wolf. This research group at USC was the also first to observe ZZ Sheng, AM Hermann, A El Ali, C Almasan, J Estrada, T Datta, RJ Matson (1988)
Superconductivity at 90 K in the Tl-Ba-Cu-O system
''

Physical Review Letters ''Physical Review Letters'' (''PRL''), established in 1958, is a peer-reviewed, scientific journal that is published 52 times per year by the American Physical Society. The journal is considered one of the most prestigious in the field of physics ...

'' 60 (10), 937-940 (i) bulk Meissner effect in Tl-copper oxides and thus confirm the discovery by Allen Herman's team at the University of Arkansas of high temperature superconductivity in these compounds. He coined the term "triple digit superconductivity", and his group was the first to observe (ii) fractional quantum hall effect in 3-dimensional carbon.T Datta, M Bleiweiss, A Lungu, M Yin, Z Iqbal (2005)
Quantum Hall Effect at 40 kelvin: Evidence of MacroscopicQuantization in the Extreme Soft Limit
preprintM Bleiweiss, M Yin, J Amirzadeh, H Preston, T Datta (2004)
Extreme Soft Limit Observation of Quantum Hall Effect in a 3-d Semiconductor
'' APS Meeting Abstracts'' 1, 11012 In a paper with

Raphael Tsu Raphael Tsu (born December 27, 1931) is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and is Professor Emeritus of electrical engineering at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Charlotte, NC. Early life and education Tsu was born to a Ca ...

he derived the first quantum mechanical wave impedance formula for Schrödinger wave functions.T Datta, R Tsu (2003)
Quantum Wave Resistance of Schrodinger Functions
preprint He was also the first to show that Bragg's law of X-ray scattering from crystals is a direct consequence of Euclidean length invariance of the incident wave vector; in fact Max von Laue's three diffraction equations are not independent but related by length conservation.T Datta (2015)
Laue: right or wrong?
''

Physica Scripta ''Physica Scripta'' is an international scientific journal for experimental and theoretical physics. It was established in 1970 as the successor of ''Arkiv för Fysik'' and published by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (KVA). Since 2006, it ha ...

'' 90(3), 038002 Datta is an active researcher, with over 100 papers listed in the SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS) as of 2014.

Patents

Datta was issued one US patent in 1995: "Flux-trapped superconducting magnets and method of manufacture", with two co-inventors.

Anti-gravity work

Datta was involved in the university-funded development of a "Gravity Generator" in 1996 and 1997, with then-fellow university researcher Douglas Torr. According to a leaked document from the Office of Technology Transfer at the University of South Carolina and confirmed to ''Wired'' reporter Charles Platt in 1998, the device would create a "force beam" in any desired direction and the university planned to patent and license this device. Neither information about this university research project nor any "Gravity Generator" device was ever made public.C Platt (June 3, 1998)
Breaking the Law of Gravity
''

Wired Wired may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Music * ''Wired'' (Jeff Beck album), 1976 * ''Wired'' (Hugh Cornwell album), 1993 * ''Wired'' (Mallory Knox album), 2017 * "Wired", a song by Prism from their album '' Beat Street'' * "Wired ...

'' Despite the apparent less than successful outcome of the "Gravity Generator" development effort with Torr, Datta became interested in the effects of electric fields on gravitation, expanding on Torr's theoretical work on the subject.M Yin, M Bleiweiss, R Prozorov, T Datta (2000)
Search for the Effects of Inhomogenous Electric Fields on Gravitation
'' APS Meeting Abstracts''T Datta, M Yin, J Vargas (2002)
A Gravitational Experiment Involving Inhomogeneous Electric Fields
''Space Technology and Applications'' 699, 1214-221

Selected publications

References

External links

Timir Datta's page at the University of South Carolina
{{DEFAULTSORT:Datta, Timir University of South Carolina faculty Morrissey College of Arts & Sciences alumni American people of Bengali descent American people of Indian descent 20th-century American physicists Superconductivity Anti-gravity Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Indian emigrants to the United States Bengali people