THE GODS PARTICLE DISCO

The Hindu : Arts / Books : On a knife's edge

The Hindu : Arts / Books : On a knife's edge

Pomeranchuk Prize for H. Leutwyler

Only today I found out that Prof. H. Leutwyler from Bern, one of
the co-discoverers of QCD was awarded the Pomeranchuk Prize of 2011
in recognition of his work on strong interactions and chiral
symmetry. Prof. Leutwyler was a visitor at CTS for about a month
and a speaker at Lattice 2000. Details may be found here.

SCOAP3

So what is scoap3? Loosely speaking it is an analog of Project Euclid in mathematics. (Here is my post on Project Euclid.) It is meant to be an open access source of all journals in HEP. So once it kicks in, you don't have to worry about VPN and which journal you can access and which you cannot. At least this is my understanding. In any case, you are encouraged to visit their web-site.

Parag Sadhale -- RIP

I read with great shock yesterday of the tragic demise of our colleague Prof. Parag Sadhale. I had spoken only once or twice with him, many years ago, when I think we served on the same committee for KVPY, which is so long ago that I have forgotten. I would see him once in a while in the mornings near Sanjay Nagar Police Station, where I guess the bus would come for his daughter to go to school. He always had the grace to say hello when I would run into him in the coffee line or elsewhere. I also understand that he was an accomplished harmonium player.

The manner of his passing is well known and there are no words to express the horror. Once again, it shows that men are not good at getting help at all. This should be a red flag to all those who are having negative thoughts that they must get help. It should also be a red flag to well wishers that they should not ignore signs when they see them, although in this case there do not seem to have been any. No one knows what private hell he was going through which brought him to this pass. I did find a report in Deccan Herald which said that he had spoken to his brother at length and that the latter agreed with his decision, which is totally bizarre. I hope that there was something wrong with that news item.

I would like to use this post to pay a silent tribute to his memory.

Update: There are some clarifications on the newspaper web-site from relatives.

I am quoted in IBT on the Higgs

My afternoon email in response to a query via Prof. H. R. Krishnamurthy is quoted in the International Business Times here.

Higgs Seminar at CERN

The best way that I could think of following the Higgs seminar was on the live blog reporting of Prof. Matt Strassler here. Thank you Prof. Strassler!