Govind Swarup, the towering force of Indian Astronomical Society

When the news that Dr Govind Swarup had passed away first began circulating on the airwaves and on social media late on Monday night, a collective sense of shock and loss appeared to sweep through India’s astronomy community.

One famous scientist described the news as a “blow.” Another expressed being in inconsolable grief. Meantime, paeans of praise began to pile up on Twitter about a man widely regarded as having put India on the global map in the realm of radio astrophysics.

“It is no exaggeration to say that he was the father of radio astronomy in India. But more than that he was the blend of a 20th century visionary who transformed into a 21st century sage of the cosmos whose sense of curiosity and patience had not diminished,” explained former ISRO chairman Dr K Kasturirangan.

Every scientist that DH spoke to mentioned his rich legacy. But what exactly is this legacy? Some said it is his keen sense of engineering brilliance and a determination to indigenously create everything that India needed.

“He was really driven by a sense to make everything in India. He personified ‘Make in India,’ long before there ever was such a phrase,” explained Annapurni Subramaniam, Director of the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA).

This was first shown in the 1950s, in the lean, early years of Independence when science was still isolated within small pockets of institutional learning. Dr Swarup had joined the National Physics Laboratory (NPL) of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in New Delhi. He was keen on researching radio astronomy but resources were slim.

When his mentor Dr K S Krishnan, Director of the NPL asked him to develop equipment to investigate the phenomena of electronic magnetic resonance (EMR) at a certain wavelength, Dr Swarup concocted the equipment from defunct radar parts by referring to parts of the 28-volume Radiation Laboratory series on radar techniques used during World War II.

“Over the next few years, he brought this remarkable sense of engineering to the construction of a large, steerable radio telescope at Ootacamund, now known as ‘the Ooty telescope’,” Dr Kasturirangan said.

As construction of the telescope proceeded, another problem arose. The scientists began to worry that it would not be properly used because the number of radio astronomers in India was small at that time. “But Dr Swarup would point to the hundreds of workmen building the telescope. He would say that he had more than enough budding radio astronomers. "After all, they are building the thing,’ he would say,” Dr Kastuiriangan said, laughing.

The 530 metre by 30 metre telescope finally commenced operation in 1970. “It was a brilliant design because it was set across the latitude which means it could track radio signals from east and west. This enabled the telescope to determine the angular structure and precise position of many faint radio sources with a precision and angular resolution not achievable by any other telescope at that time,” Dr Annapurini said.

The success of the Ooty telescope was followed up by the construction of the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT), near Pune in 1997.

One of Dr Swarup’s students, Shweta Kulkarni, just 24 but the first Indian woman to join the Royal Astronomical Society as a fellow, described the GMRT as a love letter to Dr Swarup’s interest in the search for extraterrestrial life (SETI). Dr Swarup had previously suggested that interest in SETI is a litmus test of how much interest a society and its culture has in science.

“The GMRT was his brainchild and it is India’s biggest chance to spot signs of extraterrestrial life. He always believed that since the universe is so vast, life must exist in it somewhere other than the Earth, the real question was if it was intellectual,” Shweta said.

Meantime, Dr Swarup’s verve for indigenized manufacturing had not dimmed in later years, to the point he was reluctant to see India collaborate on multinational astronomical projects.

“Only in 2008 we were able to convince him that Indian industry would benefit if India participated in some of the global astronomy projects being undertaken, because industry would have to adopt international standards,” Dr Annapurni said.