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Greetings !

The International Year of light has come to an end and in India the activities ranging from

seminars to workshops related to optics have touched 100, which puts India at No.1 in world

regarding to IYL celebrations. I am very happy to announce that a special issue of OSI NEWS

LETTER will be published highlighting each seminars and workshops organized in India during

January 2015 to December 2015. This special issue will be edited by Dr. Nithyanandan,

Research Associate, Pondicherry University, Pondicherry and on behalf of OSI, we thank

Nithyanandan for this excellent initiative. He has already collected about 120 activities.

Professor Ajoy Ghatak has written/edited two new books in the year of International Year of

Light i) Light and its Many wonders, ii) Experiments with Light , Viva books which are

supported by The National Academy of Sciences and New Delhi office of UNESCO. OSI News

Letter congratulates Professor Ajoy Ghatak and his team of contributors for these two excellent

books. I sincerely wish that all OSI members either buy or recommend these books to respective

University/College/Institute libraries. The first announcement of next OSI symposium has come

and readers are requested to follow the OSI website and Tezpur University’s website for further

details. Tezpur University is also organizing a DST-SERC School on Metrology during June 1 to

21, 2016. OSI’s annual symposium, 2016 and SERC School are being organized by TEZPUR

UNIVERSITY due to the efforts of Professor R S Sirohi and OSI NEWS LETTER sincerely thank

Professor Sirohi for his efforts to conduct both these important events in North Eastern region of

India. In addition to these Professor Kehar Singh has translated an article on What is light ?

which appeared in ICO-News letter in Hindi and it is a nice effort. This article in Hindi is

available with me and those who wants to read can send me a mail. OSI NEWS LETTER

appreciates and congratulates Professor Ajoy Ghatak, Professor R S Sirohi and Professor Kehar

Singh for their contributions, in serving optics community in the year of light. In this issue Dr. P

T Ajith Kumar, OSI corporate member has written about his company Light Logics and

challenges he faced. He also had organized a memorial lecture in honour of Dr. P Hariharan ,

who passed away on 26th

July last year and has written about him in this News Letter. OSI

mourns the demise of Dr. P Hariharan.

C S Narayanamurthy (naamu.s@gmail.com)

( Editor, OSI’s News Letter )

Optical Society of India’s

NEWS LETTER Vol. 2 No.1, July – December, 2015

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Contents

1. Design Software Seminar at DIT, Dehradun, Santosh Kumar

2. Books Reviews, C S Narayanamurthy

3. Forthcoming Seminars/Symposia/Workshop

4. Light Logics, P T Ajith Kumar

5. Pleasure and Pain of leading….., P T Ajith Kumar

6. Tribute to Professor Hariharan, P T Ajith Kumar

Design Software for Photonics, One day seminar at DIT, Dehradun

Professor M P Kothiyal is felicitated at DIT Dr. Philip Weetman is felicitated at DIT

SPIE & OSA Chapter of Dehradun Institute of Technology(DIT) University, Dehradun

organized a Seminar on “Design Software for Photonics” on Nov. 21, 2015. The 2015 has been

declared as the International Year of light and as light plays a key role in various fields of our

lives, so the importance of photonics has been enlighten. International Year of Light 2015,

recognizes the importance of rising global awareness of how light based technologies promotes

sustainable development and provide solution to global challenges in energy, education ,

agriculture and health. The International Year of Light and light based technologies is a global

initiative that will highlight to the citizens of the world the importance of light in optical

technologies, in their lives, for their futures and for the development of societies.

A seminar has been inaugurated by Prof. K.K. Raina, Honourable Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Shishir

Kumar, Director Academics Administration, Prof. Sandeep Sharma, HoD-ECE. This Seminar is

coordinated by Dr. Santosh Kumar, Faculty Advisor, OSA and SPIE Chapter, DIT University.

Prof. M. P. Kothiyal, IIT Madras has delivered a talk on “Light and its Applications:

Some Landmark Developments”. Dr. Philip Weetman (Research Scientist at Optiwave,

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Ontario, Canada) has delivered a talk on “Photonics Simulation Software for Modelling Space

Division Multiplexing” and demonstrates the various design concepts of Photonics. About more

than 150 students has been participated in this seminar.

Reported by Dr. Santosh Kumar, DIT, Dehradun

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Photograph shows group of students who participated in DIT, Dehradun’s Seminar

2. Book Reviews, C S Narayanamurthy

i) Light and its Many Wonders, by Ajoy Ghatak, Aniban Pathak, V P Sharma, VIVA books,

New Delhi

Light and its many wonders is really a wonderful book with a forward from Professor M G K

Menon, F R S. This book is a collection of several optics related topics written by experts in this

field. For example, Ajoy Ghatak himself writes about optical fibers, Kehar Singh and Sirohi

writing about speckles, holography and experiments with light respectively. Starting with an

introduction, a nice article on “ A Leading light : J C Bose and Table top Experimental Science”

by Rajarshi Roy and Joseph Hart is very apt in the context of India as J C Bose did pioneering

work on electromagnetic waves at the end of 19th

century. There are several topics like, Sunlight

and Human Health, Non-Linear optics by Professor Thyagarajan, Light and sight by

Vengu(Vasudevan Lakshminarayanan and Mahalakshmi Ramamurthy), Light and plant life,

Professor Bishnu Pal’s Fiber Optic Sensors, Anurag Sharma’s 2-D and 3-D images etc. In short

the book covers all topics with light as central theme, starting from quantum information

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processing to biology, medicine, vision, imaging, communications, telescopes and universe.

Beauty of this book is that it can be kept in any Higher Secondary school library and it should be

in all undergraduate science and engineering colleges. Any science or engineering student can

understand these topics and, I congratulate the editors and contributors for their excellent effort

to bring out such a book in year of light.

ii) Experiments with light, by Ajoy Ghatak, MV Learning, London, New Delhi

Professor Ajoy Ghatak comes with another beautiful book on “ Experiments with light”. It is a

well written book on some of light based excellent experiments, demonstrated with simple

examples using light. The chapter 2 starts with refraction of light, total internal reflections using

water in a glass and ends up with connection to ray propagation through optical fibers and is a

fine way of demonstration to students. The book covers not only simple demonstrations but also

the related applications in real life examples about focusing of laser beams, dispersion and

rainbow, interference and diffraction properties of light, polarization of light and Einstein’s light

quanta concept via photoelectric effect to name a few. The book also covers some of important

topics like EPR paradox, Einstein’s E = mc2, Rayleigh and Raman scattering etc. In short I

strongly recommend this book to any College library where it has undergraduate course in

physics.

3. Forthcoming optics seminars/symposia/workshops in India

1. SERC School on Optical Metrology, Organized by TEZPUR UNIVERSITY, Tezpur, Assam,

Dates : 1st June 2016 to 21

st June 2016 , Lecture details at TEZPUR UNIVERSITY website and

last Date for requisition for participation is over.

2. 3rd INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON OPTO-ELECTRONICS AND APPLIED

OPTICS,2016 (OPTRONIX-2016) 18th-20th August, 2016, UNIVERSITY OF

ENGINEERING AND MANAGEMENT, KOLKATA, INDIA, website : www.iem.edu.in,

Contact Person : Dr. Indirani Bhattacharya, IEM, Kokatta

3. International Conference on light and light based technologies (ICLLT), November 26 to

28, 2016, Tezpur University, Nappam, Tezpur, Assam – 784028, E-mail

: icllt2016@gmail.com

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Acknowledgements

I thank, Kallol Bhattacharya and Dr. P T Ajith Kumar for their inputs in making this News

Letter.

Request to OSI members and any one related to Optics

I request all optics researchers from India and abroad to send relevant materials to next issue of

News Letter to naamu.s@gmail.com

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