G V Pavan Kumar @pavangv - Bluesky Profile

Light as EM wave – in Maxwell’s words Every year, I teach an optics course to physics majors (including physics iPhD students and MS Quantum Tech students). In the process of introduction, I discuss how light was discovered to be an el…

The highlighted text is the famous statement. Before that, Maxwell compares his result with two experimental results and confirms his prediction. I follow this up with Hertz’s experiment.

link to the original paper in my blog: historyofscience.in/2025/08/06/l...

09.08.2025 13:04 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

One of the thrills of this topic is to quote Maxwell from his legendary 1865 paper1, in which he makes this monumental connection. Every time I teach this, I get an intellectual kick, even after doing this for almost 1.5 decades.

2/

09.08.2025 13:04 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

Every year, I teach an optics course to physics majors (including physics iPhD students and MS Quantum Tech students). In the process of introduction, I discuss how light was discovered to be an electromagnetic wave.

1/

09.08.2025 13:04 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

Good books : Bohren & Huffman Cover of ‘Absorption and Scattering of Light by Small Particles’ by Craig F. Bohren and Donald R. Huffman. It is important to read good books. Astrophysics, quantum mechanics, and gravi…

Book reco..

historyofscience.in/2025/06/03/g...

03.06.2025 04:17 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Maths, Mechanics & Eureka References: GoogleTalksArchive, dir. 2012. The Archimedes Palimpsest. Heath, T. L. 1897. The Works Of Archimedes. Cambridge University Press. “Ishango Bone.” 2025. In Wikipedia. “Mathematics in Ind…

New A-V essay drop
historyofscience.in/2025/04/22/m...

23.04.2025 00:19 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

J.C. Bose and the measurement of refractive index Image : Wikicommons How do you determine the refractive index of a material which is not transparent? In 1895, J.C. Bose addressed this question experimentally using ‘electric rays’, wh…

On JC Bose

historyofscience.in/2024/01/08/j...

17.04.2025 08:21 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Conversation with K. Sridhar K. Sridhar is a theoretical physicist and author currently at Azim Premji University, Bengaluru. Formerly at TIFR Mumbai, his research spans high-energy physics, including extra dimensions and supe…

Conversation with K Sridhar..on his work in physics, philosophy and novels.. including the recent philosophical novel: Ajita

historyofscience.in/2025/04/12/c...

12.04.2025 14:44 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Physics Portal of Aristotle References: 1. Adamson P. Classical Philosophy: A history of philosophy without any gaps, Volume 1. Oxford, New York: Oxford Univer…

Ep 94 is on Aristotle...and his physics

historyofscience.in/2025/04/03/p...

03.04.2025 15:48 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Herschel, IR radiation and the 3 steps of science I came across a nice article on the discovery of Infra-red (IR) radiation by William Herschel. It has some information on how he detected the IR part of the electromagnetic spectrum. It was interes…

historyofscience.in/2025/03/28/h...

28.03.2025 04:39 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Engineering Civilizations References: [1] J. Poskett, Horizons: A Global History of Science. Penguin UK, 2022. [2] K. Simonyi, A Cultural History of Ph…

Start of a long series of audio/visual essays on global history of Physics

historyofscience.in/2025/03/25/e...

26.03.2025 03:34 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

We have a paper in a special issue of JPCC - on Photothermal and Non-Fluorescent Imaging in Microscopy and Spectroscopy.

pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

Thanks to :
S. Adhikari, UIUC, USA
F Cichos, Leipzig University, Germany
M Orrit, Leiden University, The Netherlands
for invitation

14.03.2025 02:35 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Conversation with Vinita Gowda Vinita is a botanist and an Associate Professor at IISER-Bhopal : She and her research group work on tropical ecology and evolution of plants. Her lab specializes in plant ecology and evolution, wi…

Ep 91 with Vinita..and her intellectual explorations..

historyofscience.in/2025/03/08/c...

08.03.2025 03:32 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Episode 11 - Injectives - Peter Adamson on The Early Philosophers | The Mathematicians Podcast In today's episode we have a special treat as I sit down with Professor Peter Adamson to ask all of the questions that have been brewing over the past 10 weeks. Be prepared for significantly more expe...

I was interviewed for this episode of "The Mathematicians Podcast", which would certainly come as a surprise to my math allergic teenager self. But it's about mathematics in ancient philosophy:

mathematicians.podbean.com/e/episode-11...

05.03.2025 12:28 — 👍 26 🔁 6 💬 0 📌 0

Functional Fibers Redefine Wearables Fiber-based technology is paving the way for next-generation clothing and devices.

"Fiber-based wearable technology has the potential to reduce the weight of the technology users carry daily by replacing bulky components with lightweight, flexible materials."

Check out OPN's March cover feature for more on functional fibers! bit.ly/41ES0KP 💡🧪⚛️

#technology

03.03.2025 19:47 — 👍 6 🔁 3 💬 0 📌 1

Thanks a lot.. that is helpful..and highly appreciate your efforts.. motivates me do more and better 🙏🏽

02.03.2025 13:45 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Wonderful to learn about your process.
As an academic + podcaster, I got many pointers that are so useful, especially about converting episodes into book chapters. Hoping to emulate.

On an average(research to writing) how much time do you spend per episode?

02.03.2025 04:30 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

The March 2025 edition of the journal Resonance will be publishing my long-form essay (12 pages) on CV Raman.

The arxiv preprint of the paper in the section - History & Philosophy of Physics :

arxiv.org/abs/2403.04773

27.02.2025 03:02 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Superstitions - Kepler, Galileo & Newton from Popper's preface

Blog:

Superstition - Kepler, Galileo & Newton

open.substack.com/pub/sciencem...

13.02.2025 08:39 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

YouTube video by Science meets History ! Conversation with Samrat Mukhopadhyay – Pushing the Boundaries of Biology & Chemistry

New episode

youtu.be/UrQJbuhv1s0?...

10.02.2025 12:04 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Latest podcast episode

youtu.be/4lfcQFEEby8

17.01.2025 12:06 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

A model for Indian Academics Mainly Scientists...

Nirmalya Kajuri raised an important issue:
" It is 2025 and we still have not solved the problem of academic textbooks having absurd prices."

My blog has a reply:

open.substack.com/pub/sciencem...

13.01.2025 06:06 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0