Lyne Starling Trimble Public Event Series

The Rochester-Chandigarh Cyclotron

Jahnavi Phalkey, Science Gallery Bengaluru

Abstract

The Rochester-Chandigarh Cyclotron is today the world’s oldest functional particle accelerator. Operational in 1936 at the University of Rochester, United States, it was built merely three years after the very first cyclotron was built by Ernest Lawrence at Berkeley. The entire set-up in Rochester was dismantled and sent to India in 1967, and is now housed at the Panjab University, Chandigarh. The cyclotron has been running for nearly fifty years in Chandigarh. With the cyclotron, the regional university became one of the very few places in India for research and education in nuclear physics. This was otherwise possible only in the facilities of the Department of Atomic Energy. I have also made a film to explore the life and legacy of the machine and the struggles and triumphs of its technicians, researchers and students. My talk and the film, both, are a commentary on the state of experimental research and higher education in Indian universities.

Speaker Bio

Jahnavi Phalkey was appointed Founding Director of Science Gallery Bengaluru in November 2018. Previously Jahnavi held a tenured faculty position at King’s College London. She started her academic career at the University of Heidelberg, following which she was based at Georgia Tech-Lorraine, France, and Imperial College London. Jahnavi was Fellow, Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (the Institute of Advanced Study, Berlin). She was also external curator to the Science Museum London, and has been a Scholar-in-Residence at the Deutsches Museum, Munich. Jahnavi is the author of Atomic State: Big Science in Twentieth Century India and has co-edited Science of Giants: China and India in the Twentieth Century. She is the producer-director of the documentary film Cyclotron. Jahnavi read civics and politics at the University of Bombay and the School of Oriental and African Studies, London. She holds a doctoral degree in history of science and technology from the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta.