Opinion Remembering Jayant Narlikar, the astrophysicist who challenged dominant theories

In the early 1990s, Jayant Narlikar wrote a Marathi short story, Athenscha Plague (The Plague in Athens), which featured a virus unleashed by an asteroid. In a fictional replay of the great Athens plague, the Greek city gets swept away. However, unlike the ancient epidemic, whose causes remain unknown, Narlikar’s Athens was ravaged by a pathogen from space. A few years later, the cosmologist led an experiment to collect microorganisms from the upper atmosphere. His research suggested evidence of living matter in the stratosphere. Did some of them seed life on Earth? Narlikar counselled caution and talked of the need for more experiments. The short story and the experiment on the possibilities of microbial life outside Earth encapsulated Narlikar’s approach. The cosmologist, who passed away, at 87 on Tuesday, believed in pushing the limits of possibilities. Narlikar, the writer, took readers on exploratory journeys. Narlikar, the astrophysicist, challenged dominant theories and worked assiduously to build evidence to substantiate his claims. His long collaboration with mentor and British astrophysicist Fred Hoyle produced the most significant critique of the influential Big Bang theory.

The building blocks of the Hoyle-Narlikar Quasi Steady State Cosmology theory — it contends that the universe did not originate in one Big Bang, but has existed for infinite time and has developed in small spurts — were forged when the young astrophysicist worked with his mentor in Cambridge. But Narlikar belonged to a generation of scientists such as Madhav Gadgil, Indira Nath and Venkataraman Radhakrishnan, who gave up thriving careers in renowned global labs to nurture research and hone talent in Indian institutions. The astrophysicist took up a position at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in 1972, where he trained scientists whose work would have a seminal influence on Indian astrophysics — they include Ajit Kembhavi, the late Thanu Padmanabhan and Sanjeev Dhurandhar. In the late 1980s, when the UGC invited him to create the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), Narlikar suggested that the institute be set up within an existing university. Conceived as a hub where scholars from across Indian universities could come together to brainstorm and share resources, Narlikar’s most enduring institutional legacy started in a small room in the Pune University campus in 1988. However, in a few years, it expanded into a vibrant institution, equipped with state-of-the-art labs and telescopes.

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Narlikar saw himself as more than an academic. He wrote scripts for TV and was a regular contributor to newspapers. The astrophysicist would often use the example of vegetable prices to explain the quasi-steady state cosmology theory — prices go up and down depending on seasons, but over a decade, they go up regardless of the season. Likewise, he would say, the universe goes through cycles of contraction and expansion, but evolves over the long term. He anticipated the predicaments of the AI age in his novel, The Return of Vaman, in which a machine outwits its programmer. The scientist often drew inspiration from Indian traditions — he reportedly asked architect Charles Correa to design the IUCAA campus according to Buddhist concepts. At the same time, Narlikar made it a mission to counter pseudoscience and astrology. He made science accessible while underlining that there were no shortcuts to excellence.