Birth day of professor Satya Pal Puri

79th Birth day of professor Satya Pal Puri - one of the earliest Mossbauer
Spectroscopist of India

On 30th January, 1930, just a day before the first anniversary of Nobel laureate Ruolf L. Mössbauer, Professor Satya Pal Puri was born in a small family in rural India. His parents and especially his mother, desired very fervently that he should he devote to his eduation. With his introspective bent of mind and incisive attitude, he will assess the outcome of any step before venturing it. It is his wont to attend to the job in hand with consummate attention and a single track mind and as a consequence he could win laurels in his academic career throughout. He had uninterrupted university positions throughout. Furthermore, it is his wife who gave him complete support and encouragement to pursue his scientific career relentlessly. They are blessed with three brilliant sons who are successful in their respective careers and are a source of strength to the family. In no lesser measure, he attributes his success to the contributions made by a band of dedicated students, who are distinguished professionals in their own right.
His other interests include reading literature, poetry, philosophy and biographies of great men. He always considered the wisdom lore of the world as his inheritance and his privilege to drink deep the cup of consolation. Prof. S. P. Puri, has been Emeritus Fellow, was Professor and Chairman, Department of Physics, Panjab University, Chandigarh. Earlier, Reader in Physics at University of Roorkee and Professor and Head, Dept. of Physics, Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana. He received his M.Sc.(Hons. School) in physics from Panjab University in1953 and Ph.D. from Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh in1956, under Prof. P S Gill. He had uninterrupted university positions throughout his academic career and was awarded an I C I fellowship by the National Institute of Sciences, New Delhi. He did his postdoctoral research at Bartol Research Foundation, Swarthmore PA (U.S.A.), and later joined University of Alabama (U.S.A.) as a Visiting Asst Prof. of Physics. He visited the school of Quantum Chemistry, University of Uppsala, Sweden, in addition to visiting numerous universities and research institutes in erstwhile USSR. He was one of the earliest in the INDIA to establish the studies of Nuclear Gamma-Ray Resonance (Mössbauer Effect) in Roorkee in 1963 and established an active school of research and a number of students got their Ph.D. degrees. With the help of motivated students, he could make valuable contributions to the studies of EFG tensors in single crystals and other diverse studies of minerals and chemical compounds. His other special fields of interest include Crystal Field and Molecular orbital theories. Professor Puri has been a dedicated driving force for improvement of quality education at university level in India. He has written many text books, published by Tata McGraw-Hill Publishing Company, New Delhi and Macmillan (India), for the physics graduate students.
His students are planning his 80th Birth day celebration at Indian institute of Technology at Roorkee where Professor Puri undertook to write the one of the most important chapters of the development of Mössbauer spectroscopy in third world.

Vijayendra K Garg
Institute of Physics
University of Brasilia,
Brasilia, DF, Brazil