BENGALURU: On January 12, when Nobel laureate, Kip Thorne, gave a public lecture at the International Center for Theoretical Sciences (ICTS) he also talked about and paid sort of a homage to the late black hole physicist from the city, C V Vishveshwara, also called the ‘Black Hole Man of India.’
As a dedication to Vishveshwara’s contributions, the ICTS started the CV Vishveshwara Public Lecture Series, with Thorne being the first person to deliver the lecture.
Professor Saraswathi Vishveshwara, wife of Prof C V Vishveshwara who works with the molecular biophysics unit at IISc, also spoke on the occasion. She says, “It’s been a year since his death and I am extremely grateful that Kip Thorne, whom ‘Vishu’ knew well, is speaking at the inaugural of this lecture.” January 16, 2017 was the day Prof Vishveshwara passed away.
A spokeperson from ICTS says this was one of the many talks that will be given as part of the new Vishveshwara lecture series and many more are in the offing.Vishveshwara was one of the main scientists who made great contributions to the understanding of black holes and gravitational waves that ultimately led in making the gravitational wave experiments possible.
Vishveshvara, made important contributions into the structure and nature of black holes, since he started his work on 1968. He proposed a theory about scattered waves from black holes called ‘quasi- normal modes’ and wrote a paper on it back in 1970s.
The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory or LIGO project detected gravitational waves due to the merger of two black holes. At the same time it also detected quasinormal modes, as inferred by Prof Vishveswhara
Thorne lauded the work of Vishveshwara as one of the cornerstones of the gravitational wave experiments. He also highlighted the work of other prominent physicists such as Charles Misner, Joseph Weber and Barry Barish.