A major event of the year was the inauguration of the New Institute Building with offices for all faculty and administrative staff. Dr. Anil Kakodkar, Chairman, Atomic Energy Commission, inaugurated the building on October 24, 2002. Dr. Kakodkar and Dr. R. Chidambaram, the Scientific Advisor to Government of India delivered the keynote addresses on “Research & Education Interface”, and “The Need for Coherent Synergy” respectively.

Following this event, during 24th to 27th October, 2002, the Institute organised a conference on “New Directions for Science & Technology in the Coming Decades”. Eighteen eminent scientists including Professors R. Balasubramanian, H.S. Mani, G.K. Mehta, K.R. Parthasarathy, M.S. Raghunathan, M. Vidyasagar delivered technical talks as well as shared their thoughts on the development of science and technology and their dissemination in India.

An important development during the year is the joint HRI - IGNOU Integrated Doctoral Programme. This programme is being developed jointly with Indira Gandhi National Open University. It will enable us to offer M.Sc., M.Phil and Ph.D degrees. In particular, it will allow us to admit bright students with only bachelor’s degrees, who are desirous of pursuing research careers in Mathematics and Physics. I wish to thank Prof. H.P. Dikshit, VC, IGNOU for his very supportive role in this endeavour.

Similarly we have signed an MOU with the University of Allahabad for promoting academic collaboration. We are also trying to develop academic contacts with the IIT, Kanpur.

The development of infrastructural facilities under the IXth plan has been completed according to the plan, and, it is well within the budget and time assigned for the projects. The Xth plan started on April 1, 2002. Under the Xth plan, the Institute has embarked on some major projects. A new Beowulf Cluster is installed to do high performance numerical simulations for Astrophysics, Condensed Matter Physics, and Lattice Gauge theories. New workstations have been installed for investigations in High Energy Physics Theory pertaining to the planned searches for new particles and new physics at the Fermilab, CERN, and other upcoming colliders. New workstations have also been installed for cryptography and computational number theory, an area in which we are trying to develop a group.

The Institute has been fortunate in making quite a few academic appointments this year. Drs. Surya Ramana (Maths), R. Thangadurai (Maths) and L. Sriramkumar (Physics) have already joined. Moreover Drs. Manisha Kulkarni (Maths) and T.P. Parikh (Physics) will join soon on the HRI faculty. Drs. S. Bhattacharya, P. Chingangbam, Namit Mahajan, S.G. Manickam, M.H. Yavartanoo and K.P. Yogendra, all in Physics have either joined or will soon join as postdoctoral fellows. Prof. S.D. Tripathi (Maths) has joined the Institute as a Visiting Professor for two years. Dr. Raman Mikhalov (Maths) will be soon joining HRI as a Visiting Scientist for the next year.

Prof. T.V. Ramakrishnan (Condensed Matter Physics) has been appoin-ted as a Distinguished Visiting Professor. He will be visiting us for a few weeks every month. Professor T. Padmanabhan (Astrophysics) has been appointed as an Adjunct Distinguished Professor and has agreed to visit us for about a month every year.

The academic work at the Institute is continuing in full swing. A major event was the prestigious S.S. Bhatnagar award to Prof. Dipendra Prasad (Maths). (To the debit side of HRI, and credit side of TIFR, Prof. Prasad moved to TIFR last year. But the HRI is justly proud of Prof. Prasad’s achievements, as he spent eight years at HRI). Professor Adhikari and Dr. Surya Ramana won the NBHM awards to attend the International Congress of Mathematicians at Beijing.

The Institute hosted the following major scientific meetings.

1. The Seventh Workshop on High Energy Physics Phenomenology (WHEPP-7) was held at HRI during 4 - 15 January 2002. Professors Choudhury, Gandhi, Mukhopadhyaya and Ravindran were in the National Organising Committee and/or served as Working Group Co-ordinators. Prof. Mukhopadhyaya also served as one of the editors of the Proceedings of theWorkshop.
2. A workshop on Distributed Parallel Computing for Physicists was organised by Dr. J.S. Bagla during 11-19 April 2002.
3. The Workshop on String Theory was organised by Prof. Gopakumar at HRI during 12-23 December 2002.
4. A Workshop on Computational Algebraic Geometry was organised by Prof. S.D. Adhikari during 23rd December 2002 to 11th January 2003.
5. Instructional Workshop and International conference on Geometric Group Theory at IIT Guwahati in December 2002, was jointly sponsored by HRI. Prof. I.B.S. Passi chaired the organising committee of this programme.

I am very pleased to report on the intense research activity of our faculty, post doctoral fellows and research scholars as can be gleaned from the publication record and the record of participation in national and International meetings and projects which are reported in the following pages. Notable among these are the James H. Simons lectures at State University of New York at Stony Brook, New York, U.S.A. during April 29- May 10, 2002 and Rothschild Visiting Professorship in the Isaac Newton Institute, Cambridge, during June 21 - July 20, 2002 delivered by Prof. Ashoke Sen. Also notable is the participation of Prof. Gandhi and Dr. Goswami in the Indian Neutrino Observatory (INO) project for which HRI is one of the nodal Institutes. The INO project, if eventually approved, will be the single largest undertaking based in and funded by India.

The Institute has started a joint Maths-Physics colloquium series which has been running for the last two years. There were talks in this series by distinguished mathematicians and physicists including Profs. Tilouine (University of Paris, France) R. Parimala (TIFR), Manindra Agarwal (IIT, Kanpur), J.L. Loday (CNRS, Strassbourg, France), T. Padmanabhan (IUCCA, Pune), P. Chossat (Nice, France), G. ’t Hooft (Utrecht, Netherlands), H.P. Dikshit (IGNOU), S. Bhattacharya (TIFR). The Nobel Laureate Prof. G. ’t Hooft also delivered a popular lecture “The Universe Inside the Atom” which was widely attended by scientists and non-scientists of Allahabad alike.

The Institute appears to be making progress in attracting research scho-lars as well. Offers have been made to 27 scholars in Physics and 6 in Maths. We are very hopeful that quite a few will join.

Shri R.N. Shukla joined the Institute as Systems Administrator in August 2002. He comes to us from the Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad. Shri V.P. Tiwari joined us as Junior Hindi Translator in November 2002. He comes to us from the Indian Air Force. Shri Vijay Raghav Tiwari has joined as Librarian in April this year. He comes to us from the Arunachal University.

I am also pleased to report on the HRI’s participation in the scientific life of Allahabad in particular, and more generally in U.P. and India, at all levels. Notable among these are the “Talent Search Awards” instituted by HRI for high school / college students from classes IX through XII, and the Visiting Students Summer Programmes in Maths and Physics at the graduate/post graduate levels. The Institute also organises a special summer programme for Hindi-speaking high school students to introduce them to the beauties of science and challenges in scientific career.

Last week, the Institute celebrated its Founder’s Day on 19th July 2003. The programme included popular lectures with important educational themes by Dr. Sanjay G. Dhande, Director, IIT, Kanpur on “An Introspection on the Society- University Relationship”, and Prof. H.P. Dikshit, VC, IGNOU on “Unfulfilled Tasks in Education”. The Chief Guest on this occasion was Prof. G.K. Mehta, VC, University of Allahabad.

At the time of his retirement two years ago, Prof. H.S. Mani remarked that with his retirement, the first adhyay (canto) was over and the second adhyay was to begin. He was obviously playing on the imagery of the Bhagawad- Gita. Actually, a more appropriate assessment would be that he completed the five foundational adhyayas. We are trying to build on this foundation. We are in the sixth adhyay - the yoga of academic excellence!

RAVI S. KULKARNI

25.07.2003