Dr Narlikar Gele

Reads the Marathi newspaper headline. All Indians mourn the death of our own ‘North Star’!

Big Bang is an exploding myth, read the sign outside his room. It was also a sort of theme song for the person inside.

For Jayant Narlikar , the established theory about how the universe came into being through a Big Bang about 13.8 billion years ago, was never a settled issue. Writes Amitabh Sinha in Indian Express.

Dr Narlikar, who had contributed immensely to the development of an alternative model of the universe along with his mentor Fred Hoyle, passed away on Tuesday morning in Pune.

He was 87.Ailing for some time he had a fall two weeks ago & had to be operated last week.

One of the most celebrated Indian scientists, Narlikar, then a young researcher at Cambridge University in UK, had attracted global recognition for his work on what is known as the steady -state theory of the universe , developed by Hoyle, in collaboration with Hermann Bondi & Thomas Gold.

The Big Bang theory suggests that the universe has a definite beginning & a possible end. In his autobiography ‘A Tale of Four Cities’ he argues that there was still enough evidence to re-examine the situation.

He also wrote that some of his ideas were probably too ahead of their time. ‘One moral that I have learnt in my scientific career is that if you are ahead of time by several years ( as we were on this occasion) your ideas are dismissed as outlandish & then forgotten.

Three of his papers were published in 1966, including the one on gravity, which he said was considered ‘provocative’ in the scientific community.

He was getting noticed at the age of 26! Later he came back & trained several generations of astrophysicists & built institutions like IUCAA.

He delved into science fiction , writing short & long stories in Marathi & English, many of which became part of the school curriculum.

And yet, not to be deterred by a doctrine just because it is favored by the majority is what his life was about- both its art & its science.

Having seen him & listened to his lecture, I feel saddened by the thought that I did not know this will be the last! Gentle, soft spoken you wouldn’t believe he is a renown scientist!

In his later years his wife would accompany & guard him from making any excesses. I remember he awarded a few sitting down. His health was failing but his enthusiasm was as before!

An humble, honest & hard working human being!