THE STARGAZER
One night, the pre-Socratic philosopher Thales of Miletus was so busy gazing at the stars that he fell into a well. This popular philosophical tale might well romanticise astronomy but for one of its most committed – and renowned – practitioners, the romanticism sits alongside an understanding of some of the most complex truths about our planet.
Author of a book called “Can Stars Find Peace?”, he has been at the heart of physics and astrophysics throughout his life: after a PhD at the University of Chicago, Srinivasan was a researcher and a professor in laboratories and universities in Zurich, Gothenburg, Cambridge and Bangalore. He even studied with Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1930.
Alongside his international career, Srinivasan has made it a passion to advance astrophysics in India. He was the President of the Astronomical Society of India, and is currently a fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences.
Despite being a leading expert in labs and universities, Srinivasan’s main goal is to popularise science, making it at once accessible and fascinating to the lay audience. He’s authoring a series of popular books entitled “The Present Revolution in Astronomy”, the two first releases being “What Are The Stars?”, and the aforementioned “Can Stars Find Peace?”
An enthusiastic teacher, Ganesan Srinivasan looks at the stars to understand better where he is walking – on Earth.
