Sankho Chaudhuri (1916-2006)

Economic and Political Weekly is deeply saddened at the passing away of Sankho Chaudhuri, eminent sculptor, on August 28 in New Delhi.

Profoundly inspired by Ramkinkar Baij, professor Chaudhuri produced such masterpieces as Shringar, Cock, MusicandChemist. He was on the Faculty of Arts of the MS University, Vadodara, during the 1950s and 1960s. He had been chairperson of the Lalit Kala Akademi and was architect of the Lalit Kala Akademi Artists Studio in Garhi. Professor Chaudhuri was awarded the Padmashree in 1972 and the Kala Ratna in 2004.

Sankho Chaudhuri, brother of Sachin Chaudhuri, founder editor of the Economic Weekly and the EPW, had been on the board of Sameeksha Trust since December 1991.

A bust of Sachin Chaudhuri, delicately carved by this stalwart of Indian sculpture, adorns our office at Hitkari House.

Economic and Political Weekly September 2, 2006

science in the popular imagination, the planets have exercised a far more universal influence. They have been “claimed” for diverse reasons by many more than just scientists: by students, amateur sky watchers, and even astrologers. Perhaps this has to do with the very manner Pluto was discovered and named

– a process accompanied as much by romantic accident as by careful scientific observation and inquiry.

The search for Pluto began soon after Neptune was discovered in 1846, 60 years after Uranus was discovered in 1786. The presence of Neptune was given away by the extra perturbations that appeared on Uranus’ orbit that did not conform to the laws of Newtonian physics. It was the deviation in turn of Neptune from its expected orbit that prompted the search for a planet beyond it. The story of Pluto’s discovery initiated in the early 20th century follows a similar trajectory of adventure, scheming and rivalry between Robert Scott and Roald Amundsen that led to the discovery of the South Pole, which began around the same time. Neither the astronomer Percival Lowell nor his rival William Pickering found success in identifying the new planet. In 1930, it was Lowell’s assistant, a self-taught amateur astronomer, Clyde Tombaugh, who after long days spent in an unheated observatory, taking repeated exposures of the sky, spotted the minute shift in one among several thousand points of light that gave away a planet’s presence. Forty times farther away from the sun than the earth and circling the sun every 248 years, Pluto was named after the god of the underworld in Greek and Roman mythology, on the suggestion of 11-year-old Venetia Burney.

But doubts over Pluto’s status as planet surfaced early, in 1956, when the then world’s largest telescope at Mount Palomar measured its diameter as being half the earth’s. And in 1978, Lowell’s calculations about its mass were proved wrong when Charon, Pluto’s satellite, was discovered. Pluto’s mass was found to be 1/400th of earth’s and only one-fifth of the moon’s mass. The debate on Pluto’s planethood began two decades ago, initiated by the astronomer Brian Marsden but that such a move could perhaps affect the sentiments of its discoverer, Clyde Tombaugh, stalled the debate at that juncture. But the solar system and the universe beyond have always been in a state of revision, knowledge added and modified, following years of dogged and meticulous scientific research. Ceres, for instance, discovered in 1800 as an object in orbit between Mars and Jupiter, was declared a planet, demoted to an asteroid some years later after the discovery of similar sized objects in its vicinity and will now be reclassified a “dwarf planet”. This definition will also hereon accrue to Pluto and the object 2003 UB313, or Xena, discovered only a few years ago in the outer regions of the solar system beyond Neptune and Pluto.

EPW

Economic and Political Weekly September 2, 2006