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EXPLORING THE ELEMENTS
We invited our visitors to take a historical journey with Prof. Arnab Bhattacharya from Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, to see how we arrived at the modern day periodic table. It is not just chemistry, but inputs from astronomy to nuclear physics that have, over the years, helped us understand the elements that the universe is made up of. The periodic table is not just a symbol of chemistry but one of the great unifiers of science.
About the Scientist
Professor Arnab Bhattacharya is a scientist working in the area of semiconductor optoelectronics at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) in Mumbai. Arnab has a B.Tech degree from IIT-Bombay, a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and worked on an Alexander-von-Humboldt fellowship at the Ferdinand-Braun-Institut in Berlin, before setting up a research group in TIFR for novel semiconductor materials and devices. His work has focused on III-nitride semiconductors, in particular synthesis of materials via metalorganic vapour-phase epitaxy. Arnab is on the editorial board of the Journal of Crystal Growth and a senior member IEEE. Apart from semiconductors, Arnab is passionate about science outreach, and enjoys talking about science and demonstrating science experiments to all audiences, particularly school/college students and teachers. Arnab pioneered “Chai and Why?” Mumbai’s popular science café, and received the 2010 Homi-Bhabha-Award in Science Education, and the 2012 Chevening Rolls-Royce Fellowship for Science and Innovation Leadership and is presently the chair of Science Popularization and Public Outreach at TIFR.
