Prof. Jagadishwar Mahanty Lecture Series in Physics has been instituted by Dr. Siddharth Mahanty in memory of his father, Prof. Jagadishwar Mahanty, who was a faculty member of the Physics Department at IIT Kanpur from 1961-1972. Prof. Mahanty made important contributions to Condensed Matter Physics, particularly, to the study of many-body physics, lattice dynamics, van-der-Waals interactions and electronic structure of solids. After his M. Sc. in Physics in Calcutta University, Prof. Mahanty worked for several years at the National Physical Laboratory. In 1956, he went to the University of Maryland, USA for his doctoral degree. After completing his PhD in 1960, he joined Punjab University, Chandigarh and subsequently joined the Physics department of IIT Kanpur in 1961. He was instrumental in shaping the Physics department during its infancy. He was the Head of Physics department from 1967 to 1972.
Prof. Sudeshna Sinha spoke on Harnessing Chaos on 18th April, 2019 at Department of Physics, IITK. Prof. Sinha obtained her integrated 5-years Masters degree in Chemistry from IIT Kanpur and was awarded the departmental General Proficiency Prize. She went on to do her PhD at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, followed by post-doctoral work at the International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Trieste. On her return to India, she was a faculty member at the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bangalore and then at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai, and is currently a Professor at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Mohali. She works in the field of nonlinear science, chaos and complex systems, and her large body of work has been highlighted in news features ranging from Nature News and Views and Scientific American, to the Economist and MIT's Technology Review. She is a recipient of the Birla Award for Physics and was conferred the J.C. Bose National Fellowship. She has been elected a Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences (IAS), Bangalore, the Indian National Science Academy (INSA), New Delhi and The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS), Trieste.
