An Achievement India Never Celebrated. Unknown

Manindra Agrawal, Neeraj Kayal, Nitin Saxena.

These are the names associated with an achievement India never celebrated. This achievement happened in 2002. In a country obsessed with Cricket and Bollywood (or all things foolish), this stupendous and enormously important achievement didn't matter and went into quick oblivion, though I doubt if it ever came into limelight. The achievement in question is AKS Primality Test (Agrawal-Kayal-Sexena Primality Test). This is named after three minds behind this achievement. If you try to search 'AKS Primality Test' on Google, the first two pages of results doesn't contain any 'indian' link. Ok, only one result and that too from their alma mater Indian Institute Technology website, Kanpur. At the time they published their results, Manindra was professor of Computer Science at IIT Kanpur, while Neeraj and Nitin were his doctoral students.

Science Education and Entertainment Media in Indian Context Unknown

(This blog is, in a way, in continuation of my last blog titled “A perspective on Science Education in India : ISRO vs NASA Websites”)

Stephen Colbert, the host of enormously famous The Colbert Report, once presented a short spoof on Poincare Conjecture and Grigori Perelman. A common American would say, “I know who Stephen Colbert is. But Poincare Conjecture and Grigori Perelman^*? I have simply no idea." He should be forgiven. After all Poincare Conjecture is no sci-fi movie and Perelman is no rock star. This was in year 2006. 

What was the motivation behind this spoof? The spoof on hitherto unknown Poincare Conjecture and Perelman was barely 5 minutes long but must’ve lingered on some people’s mind and yet some might have explored more about those. Little things matter. If these little things happen more regularly, their effect becomes significant especially when other efforts like ‘Futurama’ also contribute to the cause.

A Perspective on Science Education in India : ISRO vs NASA Websites Unknown

I was in office and had plenty of time to kill. So I started browsing through internet randomly and stumbled upon the website of CERN. Two hours passed and I had still been mining through CERN website. Despite being involved in highest class research, their website is a treat for everyone.  May be you don’t understand anything about Higgs Boson. Or Big Bang Model. Or Particle Physics. They have something for everyone. Even a 13 year old student can learn almost everything (at least on basic level) about Universe. In fact, it is their aim to prepare content for every age group. Example in case: see this link.

The experience with CERN website was very stimulating. Every now and then, I occasionally visit this site just to refresh my mind. The experience with NASA website also remains the same. Their urge to share knowledge and efforts to popularize science can be seen on the very front page. If you happen to stumble upon their websites and give just five minutes, chances are that you are going to spend next one hour or more on their website. You’ll find yourself hooked. They have an entire colorful and playful section devoted to kids. In fact, their entire website offers so much content; you can become an expert of the field. One of the best features of NASA site is that you just don’t feel you are browsing through website of some government organization. Immediately after entering website, you find links to various educational resources such as NASA Images, NASA Multimedia, NASA for Educators, NASA for Students and numerous other links. You can actually feel they have taken great care about how their website should look and what it should be all about. They have tried to harness the power of the Internet.