Nobel citation to Jamia scientist for paper on dark matter

Talking about his work at IUCAA,Sami said,“If not for professor Jayant Narlikar,founder director of IUCAA,I would have not been able to come back to research. IUCAA is like Mecca for Astrophysics. My association with other researchers at IUCAA,like Varun Sahni and others have kept me going forward with research. I was unable to continue my research single handedly and wanted to work with somebody. Narlikar understood my problem and I became a visiting researcher at IUCAA for the next three years.”

Sami is of the view that due to IUCAA’s active community of international researchers he met most of his international collaborators during his stint in Pune. Earlier,between 1983-85 Sami was a faculty member at the department of Physics at the University of Pune,following which he moved to Jamia.

His paper talks about the acceleration of the universe owing to the repulsive nature of dark energy that constitutes 70 per cent of the universe. After IUCAA,Sami set up the Centre for Theoretical Physics at Jamia with the guidance of Narlikar and other colleagues at IUCAA.

Congratulating Sami on his success,Narlikar said,“It is very kind of him to attribute his success to me. Even now he keeps visiting us from time to time. His association with us has been possible only because of the unique system at IUCAA. While other research institutions do not have the mandate to facilitate interaction between researchers and universities,at IUCAA we have been able to do that. Sami did his work under our associateship programme.”

He further added that most university faculty members are not able to keep up with research work along with academics. “The basic vision behind setting up of IUCAA was just to facilitate this kind of interaction so that universities are also in able to engage in research work. Sami’s work and his achievements are an example of the fact that this arrangement is working well,” he said.