This is Tapas Kumar Das, originally from the world's most lively and vibrant city, (of course it's my personal viewpoint, others
may have their own love, I don't mind!)
Calcutta, which is the capital of the state named
West Bengal.
I am very much proud to be a citizen of
India. However, that is NOT the
'Hindutva', or other cinematic
'Mera Bharat Mahan' kinda pride, which is nurtured by
'Patriotic' activities practiced through shedding brothers/
neighbours blood.
Remember Samuel Johnson?
"Patriotism is the last resort
of
scoundrels."
Though
Delhi is the
political capital of India, Calcutta is believed to be the
cultural capital of India.
We, most of the Calcuttans, are as much
passionate about Calcutta as we feel passion about our girl friend!
.So if you
ever wish to visit our 'City of Joy' (I liked the name so I adopt it here, although I
did not like the content of that book much), here is
the
Flight Schedules and the
Railway Time Table to and from Calcutta. If you plan to
stay there,
I think
these informations will be of your interest and
this page will help you to fix up your travel schedule.
I did my Bachelor's (BS) in Physics Honours (major) from
St Xaviers' College, Calcutta and
Masters in
Pure Physics with specialization in
High Energy Physics from
University of Calcutta. I visited IUCAA when I was a student of
M.Sc. Ist Year and worked under Prof. T. Padmanabhan
on
'General Relativity and Gravitation' and
Physics of Collapsing Stars. After my M.Sc I spent
some time at Physical
Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad, India and then joined
S. N. Bose National Centre
For Basic Sciences in 1997 (May) where I
completed my
Ph.D. in Astrophysics.After that I joined IUCAA as a
post doctoral fellow in July, 2000 and
continued at IUCAA for around two years. I also spent some
time at
QMW University of London as a visiting
Fellow (2001) and at
Racah Institute of Physics,
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem , Israel as
short term Post Doctoral Fellow (2002) on leave from IUCAA.
Then I joined
University of California Los Angeles
in
Nov. 2002, as a post doctoral researcher
and enjoyed the USA's most beautiful city for more than one
year or so.
I then shifted (in February, 2004)
to the
N. Copernicus Astronomical Centre (CAMK),
Polish Academy of Science as a post doctoral fellow. CAMK is great! And I have
some very nice Polish friends over there. Warsaw as a city (and Poland as
a country in general), is genuinely great, and I was just in love with Warsaw.
For a series of photographs taken at various parts of Warsaw and Poland, you can have
a look here .
At present, I work (as an Associate Professor in Astrophysics & Theoretical Physics) at
Harish Chandra Research Institute
(formerly known as the Mehta Research Institute), India.
Since my Ph.D. days, I have visited various research institutes and Universities
in USA, Canada, UK, Germany, Austria, France, Poland, Czech Republic,
Spain, Russia, Israel, Taiwan, Thailand and Bangladesh.
Details of my academic activities are described
in my research and
vitae page.
I also visited Cambodia and Thailand to
see the
magnificent 'Angkor Wat'
in Cambodia and the famous
Bridge on the river Kwai at Kanchanaburi, Thailand.
I will put the photographs on net soon.
Various aspects of the dynamical interaction between modern science and
society appears very exciting to me and I am involved in studying the
Societal Impact of the Internet. I wrote
a paper titled
The Impact of Net Culture on Mainstream Societies: a Global Analysis
at which you can have a look if you are interested. Please note that the
paper was written in early 1998, so the data set provided in that paper
(along with some technical informations presented there) have been
dramatically changed in last three year...but what I believe that
the philosophical and sociological
perspectives has not been changed and still a major part of that article
may be quite relevant.
Though I am supposed to an Astronomer (huh :-)), more than half of my time I spend by reading
about literature, philosophy,
sociology and politics. Classical music, poetry
and good movies give me proper boost to pursue Physics.(There are other
sources of boosting also, but of course those are not to be discussed in public!
)
If you are interested, you can surf
some of the web sites of my interest
.But before that, be sure that your viewpoint matches (at least upto some extent
)
with
my philosophy of life! Otherwise it may be a boring
ride for you.
You may also have a look at some of the photographs I have
taken, please click here .
Any responsibility in connection to the content of this page is solely
mine, and does not go to HRI in any means.