Hundreds bid adieu to Narlikar, many share stories of a brilliant mind & fine mentor

Time of India

21-05-2025

Pune:
Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics
(
IUCAA
), Pune was founded with a vision that its doors would always be open to all who wanted to pursue science.
On Wednesday, from common citizens to bigwigs in the scientific, academic, and the political community, hundreds came to IUCAA to bid adieu to
Jayant Vishnu Narlikar
(86) — the man who founded IUCAA and is widely considered the father of
modern Indian cosmology
.
Chief minister Devendra Fadnavis and deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar were among those who paid tribute to Narlikar whose mortal remains were kept at Bhaskara foyer till noon.
Whether it was someone inspired by his lectures who went on to pursue research in astronomy, or a person who recalled how Narlikar once submitted his first science fiction story in Marathi under a pseudonym to avoid influencing the judges — all those who came to pay their respects had something to share about the man who loved stories as much as he loved science.
With state honours and no religious rituals, the man who inspired millions through his research, lectures, and writings was consigned to flames around 1pm at Vaikunth crematorium in the presence of his two daughters, family members, and close friends.
Yogesh Wadadekar, a senior astronomer in NCRA, remembers that he first saw Narlikar when he began appearing on television during the Cosmos program by Carl Sagan.
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"I was in Std VI or VII. He would appear in each episode for about five minutes, speaking in Hindi. I watched every episode and that inspired me to become an astronomer. The first time I saw him was at a talk he was delivering to an audience of about 1,000 people. It was an excellent lecture on extraterrestrial intelligence. What stood out was he didn't dramatize the subject or overhype it. He approached it from a scientist's point of view, not a mass media perspective.
That experience had a big impact on me. I decided, then that I wanted to pursue a PhD in astronomy," Wadadekar added.
After an engineering degree from IIT, he came to IUCAA for a summer project through their vacation students' programme, again Narlikar's brainchild.
"I was selected for the PhD programme and completed my doctorate at IUCAA. Narlikar was extremely approachable — considering you had an appointment. He was very conscious of his time and never wasted a minute on frivolous activities.
He had a habit. If a deadline was on the the 31st of the month, he would finish the work by the 20th and submit it," Wadadekar said, adding that he always spoke about the need to be part of international collaborations.
Nirupama Bavadekar, who joined IUCAA's library as a 23-year-old in 1989, said Narlikar never raised his voice. "He had foresight. IUCAA was probably the first library in Pune with public access to the catalogue — which means anyone could access it on the net.
He envisaged it in 1989. Once, there was construction debris lying around and he had told the person responsible to remove it several times. One day, he took up the equipment to clean the rubble himself.
He never shouted, never reprimanded anybody," Bavadekar, who retires next year, said.
Dhurandhar recalls G-Wave discussion
Sanjeev Dhurandhar, a senior scientist from IUCAA, who contributed to the international collaboration that detected gravitational waves, joined Narlikar as a PhD student in 1975.
"I knew mathematics, but solving problems does not mean understanding it. It was only when I joined him that I got a deeper understanding of the equations I solved. That is important, because if you are set up with a particular problem, it may not actually be solvable using standard methods. So you have to use non-standard things. But in order to use non-standard methods, you have to understand the crux of the situation.
That's what he trained me in."
Dhurandhar added that it was 1988–90 when he told him about the idea of gravitational waves when people didn't think that one would be able to detect them as they doubted the very existence of such waves.
"Experimentalists said what you're doing is impossible. But Narlikar said I should explore. If you have crazy ideas, you must explore a hundred crazy ideas. But if even one of them succeeds, you've made it, he said. And it happened," Dhurandhar added.
IUCAA will hold an internal condolence meeting for Narlikar on Thursday while the residents association of Panchwati area in Pashan will plant a sapling in his memory on Sunday.