Alladi Ramakrishnan’s Theoretical Physics Seminar

After completing his PhD at the University of Manchester, my father returned to India and joined the physics department at the University of Madras as a Reader in 1952. He was later promoted as Professor. He was developing the theory of product densities that he had initiated in his PhD thesis and studying applications of it by himself and with his students. He availed every possible opportunity to invite eminent scientists to the University of Madras and to our family home Ekamra Nivas and encouraged his students to listen to their lectures and engage in discussions with them. When my father visited the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton in 1957–1958 at the invitation of its Director Robert Oppenheimer, he had the opportunity to listen to over one hundred seminars on theoretical physics by the leading researchers of that generation. My father returned to India filled with a desire to expose students to the latest developments in modern physics. Not satisfied with the curriculum at the Madras University, he gave advanced lectures in theoretical physics to students at Ekamra Nivas. Eager students gathered at the seminar to hear his lectures, and this was formally called The Theoretical Physics Seminar. He invited eminent scientists to lecture in this seminar. My mother Mrs. Lalitha Ramakrishnan graciously hosted the foreign speakers and the students by arranging lavish South Indian dinners after the seminars. I was a very young boy, but I had the privilege of meeting the eminent visitors.