Kolhapur, Banaras, Cambridge
Jayant Vishnu Narlikar was born on 19 July 1938 in Kolhapur and grew up in the academic environment of Banaras Hindu University.
At Cambridge he became Fred Hoyle’s student and then colleague, and worked on gravitation and cosmology.
A different picture of the universe
The Hoyle–Narlikar theory developed an alternative framework for gravity, inspired by Mach’s principle. He was a critical scientific discussant of Big Bang cosmology and worked on steady-state and quasi-steady-state ideas.
He kept the debate going despite disagreeing with mainstream cosmology. Dissent in science is valuable when it is mathematically explicit and testable.
Astronomy for every university
Choosing to return to India and build institutions after an established career at Cambridge was decisive. He worked at TIFR, and in 1988 became the founding director of the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA) in Pune, which took astronomy training to universities across the country.
He wrote popular science and science fiction in Marathi and English, and connected generations of Indian students to astronomy. He died on 20 May 2025.
Sources
- IUCAA tribute: Jayant Narlikar
- IUCAA: life profile
- IUCAA
- web.iucaa.in/tributes/jvnarlikar/index.html
- web.iucaa.in/tributes/jvnarlikar/life.html
- iucaa.in/