Remembering Professor MGK Menon (1928-2016)

                             Photo: ISRO, from Wikimedia Commons

Prof Menon FRS, passed away on November 22, 2016, less than a week short of his 88^th birthday. I had worked at TIFR from mid-sixties to mid-eighties. He was Deputy Director, TIFR when I joined the Institute and was appointed Director in 1966, after Dr Homi Bhabha was killed in an air crash near Mont Blanc.

I don’t intend to write a scientific or technical essay here describing Prof Menon’s (MGK’s) very significant contributions to science, and his leadership that played a role in ensuring that science and technology activities contributed to nation building. You may consult Dr Ramanath Cowsik’s articles for this ( http://www.currentscience.ac.in/Volumes/105/04/0522.pdf and

http://www.currentscience.ac.in/Volumes/111/11/1868.pdf ).

I will only note down a few personal memories. I should, however, mention the success MGK had in leading the TIFR and the Dept. of Electronics. The environments he created and preserved enabled hundreds of us in science and technology to succeed in our work. 

My early memories of those days include one of 1964. I was working for my M Tech degree from IIT Bombay, doing a one-year project at TIFR during my second year of studies. Dr PVS Rao (PVSR) was my project mentor along with Prof JR Isaac at IITB. It was a day in May 1964, and Dr Rao had invited me to accompany him as he went to the airport to receive the CDC-3600 computer TIFR had ordered. It arrived by a chartered 707 and the Films Division was there to cover the arrival and to get an interview with Dr Rao, and we had over a dozen trucks waiting to take the computer to TIFR! PVSR had asked me to phone MGK and tell him about the arrival.

A few years later, when I was a Research Associate at TIFR, I ran into MGK at a party the molecular biologists were having to celebrate something. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that he recognized me and knew what I was working on. Colleagues ascribed this to his photographic memory, but I personally think that must have had an organized way to keep track of the relatively small research staff TIFR had at that time; but it would have surely been more than a hundred! Uday Bhaskar’s article in The Hindu ( http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/A-humanist-of-rare-elegance-statesman-of-science/article16685875.ece ) corroborates my comment on MGK’s remarkable attention to detail. I should also mention that he was a very good public speaker. His talks must have been the result of good preparation. No spontaneous public talk could be that good.

During the fifties, under the leadership of Homi Bhabha, TIFR had created three groups in three new fields of work: molecular biology, radio astronomy and computer science & technology, centered around three Indian scientists who had done promising work abroad and were willing to return to India. After Bhabha’s death, it was MGK’s turn to lead the TIFR. He supported Dr R Narasimhan (RN) in broadening the base of computer science and technology work in the Institute. He also supported Dr PVS Rao in his work on the design and development of a real-time computer and on large real-time applications of national importance.

MGK’s interest in technology went way beyond the computer field and encompassed many areas in electronics, including microwave technology and semiconductor electronics; work in these areas at TIFR were headed by Mr RVS Sitaram and Mr KV Ramanathan respectively.

A talk MGK once gave illustrates the excitement of cosmic ray research at the time of his doctoral work at the University of Bristol. His thesis adviser was Prof Cecil Powell, who had pioneered the technique of using photographic emulsions to detect cosmic rays. Powell’s team discovered a new type of meson, the pi-meson in 1947 using this technique. MGK had joined Powell’s lab in 1949 to do his PhD work. MGK said in his talk that one evening he was working at the lab, when a telegram arrived for Powell. MGK received it and called Powell on the phone; his home was within walking distance. Powell asked him to open the telegram and read it out over the phone. Well! The telegram informed Powell that he had won the Nobel Prize for Physics! Powell said, “Goku! Why don’t you put that telegram in your pocket and walk down to my place?” Menon said that it was his first sherry that day!

Astronomers paid a unique tribute to MGK in 2008, naming the asteroid 7564 as Gokumenon in his honor. They had discovered it using a telescope in India.