ASIAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICS

                It is my great pleasure to offer warm congratulations to Professor Kehar Singh on the occasion of his 80th birthday on July 3, 2021. His amazing achievements in research, teaching and professional service in the field of optics are summarised at the front of this Special Issue of The Asian Journal of Physics. I have known Professor Singh nearly all my professional life, over 50 years; we have interacted on several occasions and I would like to describe two of them.

                In September 1969, I started my Ph D studies at Imperial College London, under the supervision of the Professor Walter Welford; he was an exceptionally kind and gentle person, but his optics knowledge was so comprehensive, he was quite a daunting character to a new Ph D student. So if I had a “trivial” question (of course few questions are ever trivial), I dare not to ask my supervisor. Fortunately, around the same time, an Academic Visitor from India arrived in the group, a young Kehar Singh, and our desks were next to each other, we sat literally 1 metre apart for that year. I can recall three aspects of our interactions ... four if you count introducing me to proper Indian food (as opposed to what passed for “Indian food” in London then). First, he listened to my questions carefully and did his best to either answer them, or, more often, point me in the right direction. Second, he clearly had shares in Rank-Xerox (the dominant photocopying company at the time) as he must have made copies of dozens of journal papers every week, and this contributed to his encyclopaedic knowledge of physical optics. Third, he was scientifically rigorous, and loose coffee-table arguments had little place for him. You can imagine how I benefited from his wisdom, his passion for serious scientific discourse and his hard work. Having such a mentor was a blessing for me.

                Moving forward nine years, to the autumn of 1978, I was between jobs, having resigned from London University’s Queen Elizabeth College and accepting a post at The Institute of Optics, Rochester, NY. But my last day at QEC was 30th September 1978 and my US visa was still months away! Kehar kindly invited me for an extended visit to IIT, Delhi, which the British Council funded, and I spent 2 months there, from early September to early November. This was a life changing experience for my wife and I, one so etched in our lives, that for many years we did not return to India because it might spoil those wonderful memories. During this visit, I cannot say Kehar and I did great science together or engaged in intellectual discussions on the finer points of coherence theory (we probably did, but that is not what I remember). My wife and I simply had the most amazing time, engaging with a culture and way of life that we had never encountered before. Most people in the World are only taught the history of their own country, and usually the facts taught are very selective; India opened up our eyes to another world we were never told about. We stayed at the (then) small Guest House on the IIT Campus and were looked after with such kindness by the staff. In addition to the many visits we made to places like Jaipur, Fatehpur Sikri and the Taj Mahal (at dawn, no other tourists around), we were in Delhi over Diwali, attending the nightly re-telling of the Ramayana on the IIT campus. Kehar looked after us so graciously, and most importantly of all, introduced us the the Evergreen Sweet House, in Green Park, which I think still exists today. Since that visit I have been back to India five times, the most recent being to IIST Thiravananthapuram in November 2019; all visits to India are memorable but that first one in 1978, at Kehar Singh’s invitation, is etched in my mind.         

                Kehar Singh has achieved so much, and generations of students have benefitted from the knowledge he has passed on the them. As scientists, we often focus only on the scientific achievements of our colleagues, but personality is every bit as important, and Kehar showed me his kindness, respect, consideration for others, and generosity, and for this I thank him from the bottom of my heart.

Chris Dainty,

Galway, Ireland.

May 14, 2021