Professor Mrinal Kumar Dasgupta was born on September 1, 1923. He was a student of Professor Satyendra Nath Bose during his B.Sc. (Physics Honours) course at the Dacca University. After completing his M.Sc. from Dacca, he joined as a Research Assistant to Professor Sisir Kumar Mitra in 1947. Deeply impressed by his intellectual abilities and hard work, Professor Mitra recommended him for an overseas fellowship at Manchester University from where he was awarded his Ph.D. degree in 1954. Professor Dasgupta made pioneering contributions in radio astronomy along with his co-researcher Roger Jennison of Jodrell Bank Observatory. They were the first to design, fabricate and successfully operate a radio intensity interferometer. Dasgupta and Jennison measured, for the first time, the apparent angular structure of two strong radio sources – Cygnus A and Cassiopeia A with desired precision. Their observations revealed that for Cygnus A, the east-west brightness profile showed two bumps of increased intensity of radio emission. They had found the first evidence of a “radio galaxy” which was a galaxy with two radio emitting lobes on both sides of it with a separation of a few hundred light years. This discovery of the double radio source in Cygnus A by Dasgupta and Jennison in 1953 is now regarded as one of the ten classical discoveries in radio astronomy. After coming back from Manchester, he joined the Institute of Radio Physics and Electronics from where he retired in 1988. |
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He was elected a Fellow of the Indian National Science Academy (INSA) in 1974 for his pioneering research in radio astronomy. Professor Dasgupta received the S.K. Memorial Lectureship of the Academy in 1990. He was a member of various scientific and professional societies and served as President of Indian Astronomical Society. He breathed his last on November 28, 2003.
The Institute of Radio Physics and Electronics, the first University Department in India to conduct post-graduate teaching program in Electronics, Communication, Computers and Radio Science, and presently in its Diamond Jubilee year, will organize a one day seminar in memory of late Professor M.K. Dasgupta on his birthday, September 1, this year. This seminar will be held under the auspices of the UGC Networking Resource Center, a distinction earned by the Institute in 2008. The following five eminent speakers will deliver lectures on areas related to radio astronomy:
- Professor Govind Swarup, F.R.S.
- Professor S. Ananthakrishnan, Ex-Observatory Director, GMRT
- Professor Rajaram Nityananda, Director, NCRA
- Professor Ashok Ambastha, Udaipur Solar Observatory
- Professor N. Udaya Shankar, Raman Research Institute
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