[SPA] SPA SECTION NEWSLETTER, Volume XXIV, Issue 38

Tue Jul 11 19:13:39 PDT 2017

AMERICAN GEOPHYSICAL UNION
SPA SECTION NEWSLETTER
Volume XXIV, Issue 38
Jul.11,2017

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Table of Contents

1. Prof. Predhiman Krishan Kaw

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Editor: Peter Chi
Co-Editor: Guan Le
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Prof. Predhiman Krishan Kaw

From: Abhijit Sen, Gurbax Lakhina, Bruce Tsurutani (senabhijit at gmail.com)

Prof. Predhiman Krishan Kaw, an internationally acclaimed plasma physicist and the Founder Director of the Institute for Plasma Research (IPR), Gandhinagar, passed away due to a sudden cardiac arrest on 18th June, 2017. He was born in Kashmir on 15 January 1948, and was a child prodigy who received his early schooling at home and went on to obtain his Master’s degree at the age 16 and a Ph.D. at the age of 18 from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. He then joined Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory at the age of 19 by which time he already had 20 publications to his credit.

Predhiman was a brilliant scientist with a broad range of research interests and a prodigious research output spanning over 389 papers in international journals. His early work at Princeton during the period 1967-71 resulted in seminal contributions to nonlinear problems connected with laser - plasma interactions and laid the foundations for much of the current research on high power laser matter interactions.  Among his notable contributions are laser induced parametric instabilities which lead to anomalously large absorption as well as back and side-scattering, filamentation of laser light due to ponderomotive forces in a plasma and relativistic nonlinear effects which have also found application in pulsar radiation phenomena. From 1971-75, he worked at the Physical Research Laboratory (PRL), Ahmedabad where he extended the theory of parametric instabilities to magnetized plasmas. The review articles written by him and some of his collaborators in this period are widely cited and have had a significant impact on the development of intense RF heating in magnetized plasmas and in the interpretation of ionospheric heating experiments at Arecibo. During this period, he also made important contributions to the theory of ionospheric irregularities and even initiated laboratory experiments at PRL to simulate some of the ionospheric phenomena thereby planting a seed for future experimental plasma physics activities in India.

In 1975 Predhiman went back to Princeton and took up research on magnetically confined fusion plasmas and made several pioneering contributions in this area. He showed that the decades old conventional wisdom on the stability of drift waves in sheared geometry (a prime candidate for transport in fusion devices) was incorrect. He also demonstrated the existence of a coalescence instability of magnetic islands and showed how model calculations can elucidate complex nonlinear magnetic reconnection phenomena (these ideas have found applications in diverse phenomena like disruption in tokamaks, energy release in solar flares and sub-storm effects in tail regions of the magnetosphere).

Predhiman was also responsible for initiating and developing the national magnetic fusion program in India. In the late seventies and early eighties, he and some of his colleagues at PRL succeeded in persuading the Dept. of Science and Technology, Govt. of India, to set up a major programme of plasma physics at PRL. He returned to India in 1982 to direct this programme, which eventually evolved into the autonomous Institute for Plasma Research. Under his leadership and guidance, the this Institute made remarkable progress on several fronts and in a short time put India on the world map of fusion research and also earned the country a membership in the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project. During the formative years of ITER, Prof. Kaw played a very important role as Chairman of the ITER STAC, the Science and Technology Advisory Committee of ITER by making sure that there was no compromise in the final scientific and technical objectives of ITER.

For his outstanding contributions and achievements, Prof. Kaw received many honors and awards during his illustrious career including the Indian National Science Academy’s Young Scientists Award in 1974, the Padma Shri award in 1985 and the SS Bhatnagar award in 1986. Most recently he was awarded the Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar Prize for “outstanding contributions” in the field of plasma physics by the Association of Asia Pacific Plasma Physics Societies. 

Above all, Prof. Kaw was a passionate scientist and a great teacher who never tired of promoting the cause of science and spending enormous time mentoring students and younger colleagues. As a human being he was extra-ordinarily kind and gentle with infinite patience particularly for younger colleagues. This coupled with his infectious enthusiasm for research and informal behavior encouraged many students and scientists, not only from within the Institute but also from the Universities and the scientific community abroad to interact with him and collaborate with him in research. Each one of them felt enriched and emotionally touched by his warmth and generosity of spirit. In his more than 50 years of active scientific life, Predhiman has not only contributed significantly to the progress of plasma physics and its applications in India and abroad but has also inspired a lot of young minds and touched a great many human lives in an uplifting manner and thus leaves behind an invaluable legacy in science and humanity.  His death is a great loss for the plasma physics community worldwide. 
Prof. Kaw is survived by his wife Saroj and children, Sidharth, Prashant and Puja.

Abhijit Sen, Gurbax Lakhina and Bruce Tsurutani.  For additional information, please contact Senabhijit at gmail.com.

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