Reviews and reactions (articles)

P. A. M. Dirac (Nobel Prize 1933): “Mr Raju has shown that he has great initiative and has worked extremely hard. He is the sort of student one wants to help.”

(On my ISI Discussion paper No. 7802 later expanded to my Ph.D. thesis.)
P. C. W. Davies (Templeton Award 1995): “…shows great imagination and promise”

(On my ISI discussion paper No. 7802.)
A. N. Mitra (formerly INSA Albert Einstein Professor): “…there is ample evidence of original thinking.”

(On my ISI discussion papers.)
Second Referee Report: “This is a paper of very high quality, addressed to problems which are certain to be of increasing importance in the future. The presentation is exceptionally clear, not only in the straightforward sense of what it actually proved, but also in placing these results in a significant physical context. Although perhaps a rather long paper, it would suffer under attempts to shorten it.”

(On my paper, “Products and Compositions with the Dirac Delta Function”.)
A. K. Raychaudhuri (author of the Raychaudhuri equation): “Raju is a very good researcher. He has imagination, creativity and confidence in himself.”
Third referee’s report (Foundations of Physics): “I find its basic idea…very interesting. I think such an approach could yield a thought-provoking paper.”

(On my paper on “Ancient and Modern Cosmology”.)
Mauro Francaviglia (Math Review 83j:83025 83C): “an original approach to the problem of junction conditions in general relativity…based on the extensive use of nonstandard analysis on distributional spaces”

(On my paper “Junction Conditions in General Relativity”.)
J. F. Colombeau (Professor, Ecole Normale Superieure, Lyon): “Dr C. K. Raju is a very active mathematician …working on products of distributions, a field in which he is a recognized expert.”
N. Dadhich (Director, Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics): “Dr C. K. Raju…is a very enthusiastic and energetic researcher who is bold and committed enough to not only take up very difficult problems but could pursue them with a reasonable degree of success. His work on distribution theory and its applications in relativity and fluid mechanics is a good example of this. Further he is very imaginative and has a knack of pursuing unconventional ideas…with vigour and tenacity.…even those who do not subscribe to his ideas?would admire his originality and courage.”
D. N. Srivastava (Head Phonetic Code Section, BARC): “I was very impressed by the detailed coverage of the subject…specially by the references to our ancient literature.”

(On my paper “Philosophical time”.)
Referee report: “the author examines the historical role of the famous Michelson-Morley experiment. He concludes that it did not really play as decisive a role as is commonly believed…The paper is well-written and enjoyable to read. The arguments are clearly and carefully presented, and it is clear that a good deal of thought and analysis has gone into them.”

(On my paper “The Michelson-Morley experiment”.)
Referee report: “The author analyzes the role of Poincare in the development of relativity theory. The principal conclusions in this paper are that Poincare played a far more central role in this development and understood the essential elements of the theory better than is commonly believed. The author observes that Abraham Pais, in his biography of Einstein, misrepresents Poincare’s role in the development of relativity.”

(On my paper “Einstein’s time”.)
V. K. Balasubramanyan (Retired astrophysicist NASA): “I was very…impressed with the clear exposition…I was so impressed that I have decided to subscribe [to] that journal.”

(On my paper “Thermodynamic time”.)
A. W. Joshi (author of Group Theory for Physicists): “I have now read all the three new parts of your series on Time, thermodynamic time, fields, electromagnetic time. I am absolutely thrilled by them and by the conclusions drawn. You have indeed a great knack of questioning each physical hypothesis, however fundamental and deep-rooted it may look. At the same time, you are doing it with the full rigour and vigour of a physicist…You are doing great work. I am sure it will find recognition from the world scientific community.…I think you have greatly honoured the journal by giving your series of articles to it.”

(On my paper “On Time. IV, VA and VB”.)
Karl Popper: “I found your critical remarks…very good.”

(On my criticism of his criterion of falsifiability in my book, as summarised in a letter.)
Jagdish Mehra (UNESCO Sir Julian Huxley Distinguished Professor, and Feynman’s biographer): “Dr C. K. Raju…is perhaps one of the most brilliant young persons I have met in a long time, either in India, or coming from there to do research for some time abroad. I found that Dr Raju is full of brilliant ideas, a number of them most original…. It is my conviction that Dr Raju has decidedly within him certain elements of genius which, if properly channeled, could help him to develop into a really original thinker of the first rank. I know it from my own experience when…I was advised…to go to work with Wolfgang Pauli who, in turn, sent me to Werner Heisenberg.…When I met Dr Raju in Trieste, I invited him to work with me…as part of the UNESCO International Programme, …which is guided by a most distinguished Scientific Advisory Committee (including fifteen Nobel Prize winners in Physics, Astrophysics, Cosmology…and three Fields Medalists in mathematics).”

(In a letter to Prof. Yash Pal, then Chairman University Grants Commission.)
A. W. Joshi: “It is fantastic…You are now rising to the level of Bohr and Pauli and others.”

(On “Quantum Mechanical Time”.)
Anon. (“Curt Joy”): “Wondrous cogency”

(A reader’s comment on my article “Benedict’s Maledicts”).
(Article on “Kosambi the Mathematician”)
Amit Bhaduri (JNU): “I enjoyed and learnt from your paper…It widened my horizons.”
T. Krishna Kumar (IIM Bangalore): “your article is a great contribution”.
Martin Bernal (Cornell): ”It will take me some time to digest your article, but the initial glimpses look fascinating. I know that my father [J. D. Bernal] had a great respect for the younger Kosambi, with whom he felt very close.”
Roger Anderson (Simon Fraser University, Canada): “my goodness, I have started reading this and am already late for the bus, but can’t stop”.
Ananya Vajpeyi, Boston (Caravan Magazine): “Particularly interesting, in both the EPW (2008) issue as well as the recent DN Jha edited volume, are the essays by CK Raju”.
Deccan Herald (Editorial, 4 March 2012): “Raju…make[s] an example of Kosambi…for a debate on Nehru’s vision”
Resonance: “As…Raju points out, Kosambi…discovered … the Karthunen-Loeve Expansion”.
indiainfoline.com “The outstanding outsider”: “There are several incisive reviews from Kosambi’s friends and followers from the East and the West but the best tribute to Kosambi comes from Dr. C K Raju, noted computer scientist, mathematician, educator, physicist and polymath researcher. …Raju succinctly explains the tragedy of Kosambi’s infamous solution to the famous Riemann hypothesis….Raju extends this incident to drive home a larger point: the central challenge of formal mathematics. The value of a mathematical theorem, like the value of a piece of art, lies solely in the eyes of the beholder. But unlike a piece of art, a piece of advanced formal mathematics is blessed with a handful of beholders — ‘five or six people in the world if one is indeed lucky.’ Therefore the value of a mathematical conjecture is typically assessed by the ‘establishment’ authorities who are known to play with the subjectivity of the subject matter with intentions not always noble.”
Zainon Ahmad, editorial in Sun, Malaysia, 1 July 2011, on my talk on “Decolonising math and science”: “They were knocked off their pedestals just as rudely as Saddam Hussein statues were pulled down…. Among them are such gods of science and mathematics as Sir Isaac Newton…Kepler, Descartes and Einstein…. The three day International Conference on Decolonising our Universities that ended on Wednesday in Penang was told…that he [Nicolaus Copernicus] was not the revolutionary scientist he is made out to be. He was just a common plagiarist. He merely translated the work of Ibn Shatir of Damascus. It was told that few academics, scientists,…were really free of the influence of Christian theology because for centuries the church was the key consumer of the products of the Western university system…. The brilliant Stephen Hawking…wrote many …books…some contain quite a bit of Christian propaganda…. The great 16th century cartographer Gerardus Mercator whose maps and charts helped the Europeans to reach the East was so fearful of the church that he did not acknowledge his non-Christian…sources. Another great god of science and mathematics, Albert Einstein, was dragged down from his Olympian heights when it was disclosed that his formula on [equations of] the theory of relativity was corrected by Indian mathematician and scientist C. K. Raju recently. ”
Asad Zaman (former Vice Chancellor, PIDE), on talk and articles “Euclid must fall”: Professor C K Raju is one of the deepest thinkers of modern times. He has managed to see through a web of deceit which has been spun over centuries to project the myth of Western intellectual superiority. Understanding his works opens the pathways to new ways of thinking about science and mathematics, as well as many other fields of knowledge. These new pathways are desperately needed today.