M. G. K. Menon

Mambillikalathil Govind Kumar Menon
Born	28 August 1928 (1928-08-28) (age 83) Mangalore, Karnataka, India
Nationality	Indian
Fields	Physics
Institutions	Tata Institute of Fundamental Research Indian Space Research Organization Department of Science & Technology, Government of India
Alma mater	Royal Institute of Science University of Bristol
Doctoral advisor	Cecil F. Powell
Known for	KGF Experiments
Notable awards	Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology (1960), Fellow of the Royal Society(FRS)(1970) Abdus Salam Medal (1996)

Mambillikalathil Govind Kumar Menon, FRS (born 28 August 1928), also known as M. G. K. Menon, is a physicist and policy maker from India. He has had a prominent role in the development of science and technology in India during the past four decades. One of his most important contributions was nurturing the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, which his mentor Homi J. Bhabha founded in 1945.

He undertook experiments with cosmic rays to explore the properties of fundamental particles. He was actively involved in setting up balloon flight experiments, as well as deep underground experiments with cosmic ray neutrinos in the mines at Kolar Gold Fields. He is currently Vikram Sarabhai Fellow of the Indian Space Research Organisation. In the past, he has been President of the National Academy of Sciences, India, Director of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai (1966–1975), Chairman Board Of Governors, Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay and Chairman Board of Governors of the Indian Institute of Information Technology, Allahabad. He has won the Abdus Salam Award, and is a member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. He is one of the most prominent scientists from the state of Kerala. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in May 1970.^[1] The asteroid 7564 Gokumenon was named in his honour in late 2008.†

Early life

Education

M. G. K. Menon was educated at Jaswant College, Jodhpur, and the Royal Institute of Science, Bombay, before he moved to the University of Bristol for his Ph.D in elementary particle physics under the guidance of Nobel Laureate Cecil F. Powell in 1953.^{[citation needed]}

Association with TIFR

He joined TIFR in 1955 "essentially because of Bhabha", and the association lasted nearly five decades. He became the director of the institute in 1966, at the age of 38, following Bhabha's untimely death. In fact, M. G. K. Menon began handling the affairs of the institute ever since he was barely^{[weasel words]} 33 because of Bhabha's increasing involvement with the country's nascent atomic energy programme.^{[citation needed]}

Special Awards: He won the Padmabhushan in 1968 and Padma Vibhushan in 1985^{[citation needed]}

KGF experiments

M.G.K Menon was involved^{[weasel words]} in all the large-scale experiments at the TIFR from its early days, in particular, the cosmic ray studies initiated in 1964 in the mines at Kolar Gold Fields (KGF). In the nearly three-decade-long story of experiments at the KGF, relating to muons, neutrinos, weak interactions and proton decay, he played a major role. It was the KGF experiment that ruled out the hypothesis called "Utah Effect" to describe the energy spectrum of muons reaching underground.^{[citation needed]}

The more significant achievement of the KGF experiment was to demonstrate the feasibility of doing neutrino-induced interactions and related new phenomena deep underground. It was also the first experiment in the world, in 1965, to detect atmospheric neutrinos, which are formed at the top of the atmosphere due to cosmic ray interactions. The neutrino experiments also threw up a handful of rare events, called Kolar events, which are suggestive of massive (with more than 3 giga electron Volt mass) and long-lived (lifetimes of about a billionth of a second) particles. These have, however remained unexplained till date and are perhaps suggestive^{[weasel words]} of new physics.^{[citation needed]}

In the 1980s, M. G. K. Menon led the proton decay experiment at the KGF, the first major^{[weasel words]} dedicated experiment in the world to look for decays of the apparently stable proton, which set a limit on a proton's lifetime to be greater than 10 to the power 30 years. The experiment also provided limits on the existence of the hypothetical magnetic monopoles.^{[citation needed]}

However, with the closure of the KGF mines, these underground cosmic ray experiments came to an end in the early 1990s, much to the disappointment^{[weasel words]} of many Indian particle physicists. It was the atmospheric neutrinos that later led to the Nobel Prize-winning discovery by Japanese scientists—who in fact, started later—that neutrinos have mass and they exhibit the interesting phenonmenon called neutrino oscillation.^{[citation needed]}

References

1. ^ "Lists of Royal Society Fellows". London: The Royal Society. http://royalsociety.org/about-us/fellowship/fellows/. Retrieved 18 November 2011. 

External links

• Article by Menon: Impact of Advances in science and new technologies on society
• Article on Menon^{[dead link]}
• Interview about India's nuclear program for the WGBH series, War and Peace in the Nuclear Age
• Activists Condemn Gujarat Violence, Screen New Documentary [1]

Government offices
Preceded by Vikram Sarabhai	ISRO Chairman Jan 1972 - Sept 1972	Succeeded by Satish Dhawan

Persondata
Name	Menon, Mambillikalathil Govind Kumar
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	August 28, 1928
Place of birth	Mangalore, Karnataka, India
Date of death
Place of death