S. Pancharatnam

In this Indian name, the name Shivaramakrishnan is a patronymic, and the person should be referred to by the given name, Pancharatnam.

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 sometimes known as Pancharatnam phase for polarized beams passing through crystals.^[2]

Shivaramakrishnan Pancharatnam
Born	(1934-02-09)9 February 1934 Calcutta, India
Died	28 May 1969(1969-05-28) (aged 35)[1] Oxford, England
Alma mater	Nagpur University Raman Research Institute[1]
Known for	Geometric phase
Parents	Sivaramakrishnan [d] (father) Sitalaxmi [d] (mother)
Relatives	C.V. Raman (uncle) S. Ramaseshan (brother) Sivaramakrishna Chandrasekhar (brother)
Scientific career
Fields	Quantum optics, optics
Institutions	University of Mysore Oxford University
Doctoral advisor	C. V. Raman

Biography

He was born in Calcutta in West Bengal, India in 1934.^[1] His mother, Sitalaxmi [d], was C.V. Raman's sister, and his father Sivaramakrishnan [d] worked in the Indian Accounts Service.^[3][4] He was elected a Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences at the early age of 25. He was a reader at the Department of studies in Physics, University of Mysore from 1961–1964.^[5] From 1964 until his death in 1969 at the age of 35 he was a Research Fellow of St Catherine's College, Oxford, 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, 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, the last three papers from notes left by Pancharatnam.^[6]

In 1956, Pancharatnam was studying interference figures produced by light waves in crystal plates, under his advisor C. V. Raman, when he discovered the properties of what is now known as the geometric phase, and which predated Michael Berry's work on the topic from 1983.^[7]

References

1. "Foreword". Current Science. 67 (4): 219. 1994. JSTOR 24095725.
2. Anandan, Jeeva; Christian, Joy (1997). "Resource Letter GPP-1: Geometric Phases in Physics". American Journal of Physics. 65 (3): 180–185. arXiv:quant-ph/9702011. Bibcode:1997AmJPh..65..180A. doi:10.1119/1.18570. S2CID 119080820.
3. Rajaram Nityananda; Kausalya Ramaseshan; N. V. Madhusudana; George William Series (April 2013). "S Pancharatnam (1934–1969): Three phases". Resonance. 18 (4): 301–305. doi:10.1007/S12045-013-0046-Y. ISSN 0971-8044. Wikidata Q125516639.
4. Uma Parameswaran (2011). C.V. Raman : A Biography. Penguin India. ISBN 978-0-14-306689-7. OCLC 772714846. OL 27632780M. Wikidata Q125503928.
5. "Former Faculty". Archived from the original on 25 February 2015. Retrieved 23 April 2015.
6. Dodd, J. N. (1997). "George W Series Memorial Essays". Physica Scripta. 1997 (T70): 5. doi:10.1088/0031-8949/1997/T70/E02.
7. Berry, Michael (1994). "Pancharatnam, virtuoso of the Poincaré sphere: an appreciation". Current Science. 67 (4): 220–223. JSTOR 24095727.

External links

• JSTOR i24092525 Current Science Vol. 67, No. 4, 25 August 1994 Pancharatnam memorial issue