The vibrant audience at The Music Academy was there not for a concert. They were there to listen to scientific talks. In its fourth consecutive year, ‘Science at the Sabha’, is a programme organised by The Institute of Mathematical Sciences (IMSc), Chennai, as part of its outreach activity. It has been held once every year close to the National Science Day which falls on February 28. Last weekend, the audience prepared to listen to four scientists from different disciplines — neuroscience, condensed matter physics, ecology and complexity theory.
“We had about 1,400 registrations and nearly 1,100 are estimated to have attended,” said KN Raghavan, professor of Mathematics at IMSc and one of the organisers. He was happy at how the city has supported the activity over the years. “It is heartening that people stayed on for the questions at the end,” he added. “Since last year, a poster exhibition has become a part. So, in that sense, it has grown.”
- As a bonus for staying till the end, the audience was given a memento, a dodecahedral calendar. This is a chart paper with a shape printed on it and instructions to cut and paste it. The recipient can create a three dimensional shape with twelve sides, a dodecahedron, out of it. On its faces were printed the year’s calendar.
Last year, since the programme fell on February 11, the International Day of Women in Science, the institute wanted to have some related activity. “Our colleague and computer scientist, Ramanujam, suggested that we have a poster exhibition, so we teamed up with The Life of Science to hold one on women’s work in science,” said Raghavan.
The exhibition had as its theme, Chennai’s contribution to science and mathematics and public service related to health. Several important people who worked in this category were profiled, such as GN Ramachandran, Suniti Solomon, and CS Seshadri. “The posters brought out the importance of the work of Father Racine, who motivated several people post-Independence to take up science,” said Gautam Menon, co-organiser, who works at the interface of physics and biology, IMSc.
The first talk ‘Traffic jams in the brain’ was by Sandhya Koushika, a biologist from Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai. This was followed by ‘Untwisting twisted matter’, a half-hour exposition on electrons, leading up to how the properties of materials could be exploited in the future, by Vijay Shenoy, Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru. Harini Nagendra, an ecologist from Azim Premji University, Bengaluru, then gave a talk on Urban Ecology. Sitabhra Sinha from IMSc gave the closing talk on complexity theory, emphasising the importance of getting the right perspective on complex phenomena. Speakers made use of analogies, videos and pictures. Questions from the audience were invited through social media, and as text messages. These were addressed at the end of each talk and at the end of the programme.