Noted Astrophysicist Jayant Narlikar (1938 – 2025) Dies in Pune

Jayant V Narlikar has many firsts and many accomplishments to his name. One of India’s best-known scientists, the veteran astrophysicist was the founder-director of the Inter University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA) in Pune and is known for his seminal works in the areas of cosmology, especially in championing models alternative to the popular Big Bang theory. He received India’s second-highest civilian honour, Padma Vibhushan, in 2004. Prior to this, in 1965, he was conferred the Padma Bhushan. He was only 26 then, and perhaps, India’s youngest recipient of the award. In a television interview nearly a decade ago, Narlikar said that the early award was “a pat on the back from a nation that expected me to do more.” Over the next half century, Narlikar clearly let down neither the country nor himself.

He grew up in an academic family as his father was a professor of Math at Banaras Hindu University, and his mother was a Sanskrit scholar. He was as familiar with Kalidas as he was with equations. He always had a knack for Mathematics, but it was from a schoolteacher in an early class that he learned his father was in the same line. When he found out he felt both proud and embarrassed. Embarrassed that he hadn’t known that his father taught Math, and proud that here was an immediate connection between the two of them. His maternal uncle (the distinguished statistician VS Huzurbazar) would put up complex problems on the wall for a young ‘JVN’ to solve. If he solved it, JVN would win, if he couldn’t, the uncle would. Unwilling to lose, the prodigy spent hours cracking away at problems, and often won.

He received his BSc degree from Banaras Hindu University in 1957. He then went to Cambridge University and got a degree in mathematics. During his doctoral studies at Cambridge, he won numerous awards. After receiving his PhD degree in 1963 under the guidance of Fred Hoyle, he earned a master’s degree in astronomy and astrophysics. At Cambridge University, he was a close acquaintance of Stephen Hawking. In interviews he said that even while the UK provided a comfortable life, he always wanted to return home to India. While he wasn’t homesick, he “appreciated the need to work in a place that he could call his own”.

Upon returning to India, in 1972, Narlikar joined the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research and oversaw the expansion of the Theoretical Astrophysics Group, which gained global recognition. Narlikar always believed that good academics have to be good institution builders. With this awareness and the fact that there were few, if any, central facilities for astronomy and astrophysics in the country, IUCAA was founded in 1988. He was IUCAA’s founder-director from 1988 to 2003. When IUCAA was first entered into the Pune phone book the full form read ‘Inter University Centre for Astrology and Astrophysics’. Narlikar often joked about this typo. But it was mistakes like this—confusing astronomy with astrology—that highlighted the need for better science communication.

Unlike many intellectuals of his calibre, he had no qualms simplifying complex ideas into simple words. In a television interview, he described astronomy as, “One of the oldest sciences, it came from looking at heavenly bodies. Observations you collect from telescopes etc form the subject of astronomy. Why is the sun shining, why is the sky blue, why are the stars red or white, there is physics behind it that takes us to astrophysics. People began to discover organic and inorganic molecules in space and that brought us to astrochemistry. And now we have the question—is there life in space etc and that brings us to the newer science of astrobiology.”  At IUCAA, located in Pune University, Narlikar famously even planted an apple tree which was a descendant of the apple tree in Newton’s garden. The tree lasted more than a decade, and he would give its fruits like ‘prasad’ to his students.

Narlikar was one of the early examples of a science communicator who realised the importance and necessity of science leaving the confines of laboratories and classrooms. He received UNESCO’s Kalinga Award for his contribution to the public outreach of science. In English, Hindi and Marathi he passionately promoted the need for a scientific temper. In his book The Scientific Edge: The Indian Scientist from Vedic to Modern Times (2003) he writes of the past, present and future of science in India. And to the question, “Why study astronomy?” He replies in the book, “Because, we want to share in not only the excitement of unravelling more secrets of the universe but also the human enterprise of making our living conditions better.” And through his life and career he masterfully did both.

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