Prof P C Mahanta Memorial Lecture 2012 to be delivered by Prof A Surjalal Sharma
- at Gauhati University -
- Date :: 29th November, 2012 -

P. C. MAHANTA MEMORIAL LECTURE 2012

Prof P C Mahanta Memorial Lecture for the year 2012 will be delivered by the well known physicist of international repute, Prof A Surjalal Sharma from Department of Astronomy, University of Maryland, College Park, US. Prof P C Mahnata was the founder head of the department of this department, who has given a definite shape to this institution. A PhD from Imperial College, London, he was a top-rated physicist of that time, working mainly on material science.

Every year the Department organises this memorial lecture in the memory and honour of Prof Mahanta and remembers his invaluable contribution. Many famous scientists have graced this occasion in the past, which includes Sir (Prof) Arnold Whittaker Wolfendale, FRS and Astronomer Royal, UK and the famous Astrophysicist, Prof Jayant Vishnu Narlikar. Last year this lecture was given by renown scientist Prof Mohammad Sami, presently Director of the CTP, Jamia Millia Islamia.

This year the memorial lecture will be delivered by Prof A Surjalal Sharma. In the lecture, he will talk about complex phenomena in magnetospheres. For details, see below. Prof P C Mahanta Memorial Lecture 2012 :

Speaker : Prof A Surjalal Sharma, University of Maryland
Topic : Multi-scale phenomena and complexity of Earth's magnetosphere
Venue : Physics Gallery, Physics, GU
Date : Thursday, 29th November, 2012
Time : 11:00 AM onwards

Brief profile of Prof. A. Surjalal Sharma:

Born in 1951 at Imphal, Prof Surjalal Sharma did his MSc from University of Delhi and obtained PhD in plasma physics from Physical Research Laboratory (PRL), Ahmedabad. He was a faculty member at the PRL, before joining University of Maryland, College Park (UMD), where, at present, he works as a Senior Research Scientist. He also contributed to the theories of laboratory and space plasma devices and participated in design of a tokamak while working at PRL and Institute for Plasma Research (IPR). Prof Sharma and his group were successful in obtaining a global feature of Earth's magnetosphere using methods of non-linear dynamics in 1990. An important outcome of this research is the capability of forecasting magnetospheric sub-storms and storms with high degree of reliability.

Prof Sharma is a recipient of the inaugural CMNS Distinguished Research Scientist Prize at the University of UMD in 2011. He also delivered the prestigious Lorenz Lecture at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in 2009.

At present, he shares his time in running Research Institute of Science and Technology, Imphal, as its founder director. He was honoured by the MAPS, Imphal as a Veteran Scientist of Manipur in 2008.

Reported by Prof. Ngangkham Nimai Singh,
Head of the Department,
Department of Physics,
Gauhati University,
Guwahati – 781014,
India. E-mail: nimai03(at)yahoo(dot)com