Scientific community in Kerala mourns Thanu Padmanabhan’s demise

KOCHI: Scientific community in Kerala mourned the sudden demise of renowned cosmologist and physicist Prof Thanu Padmanabhan, who passed away in Pune on Friday after a cardiac arrest.
Popularly known as Paddy, Padmanabhan and his works have been discussed widely in Kerala. This year the state government had announced him as a recipient of the Kerala Sastra Puraskaram, given to eminent Keralites working in the field of science.The award consisting of a purse of Rs 2 lakh, citation and plaque was to be handed over in November.
K Vijay Raghavan, principal scientific adviser, GoI, tweeted: “Shocked to hear the passing of Prof Thanu Padmanabhan... His research linking general relativity and thermodynamics in new ways and in other areas, has been widely recognized... He will be missed.”

“I would say that he was at the peak of his career… His untimely death has come as a shock,” said VPN Nampoori, retd professor of photonics, Cusat. He said that Padmanabhan’s theoretical work had opened up areas of research in experimental cosmology and astronomy.
He was able to reframe Einstein’s famous equation in general relativity in the language of thermodynamics and developed a new language in understanding the structure of cosmos at quantum level.
Recipient of Bhatnagar award and the Padma Shri among others, he has authored more than 300 research papers, 10 books, a comic strip on history of physics and a popular science book titled ‘Dawn of Science’.
Padmanabhan was born on March 10, 1957 at Karamana in Thiruvananthapuram to Thanu Iyer and Lakshmi. His father had a taste for mathematics but had to abandon his studies to look after the family. Due to this background, Padmanabhan was very well versed in mathematics and was eager to learn more on the subject.
Padmanabhan completed primary education at Karamana High School. He joined the Government Arts College for pre-degree and did his UG and PG in Physics from University College, Thiruvananthapuram. He completed his MSc in physics with first rank and a gold medal. During formative years he was an active member of The Trivandrum Science Centre.
He is survived by wife, astrophysicist Dr Vasanthi, and daughter Dr Hamsa who is currently a researcher at the University of Geneva.