Physics

The Department of Physics was opened in Ramakrishna Mission Residential lege, Narendrapur with Honours affiliation from the very beginning in the year 1960. Prof. Krishnapada Ghosh from Scottish Church College joined this college as the Head of the Department. Then, almost simultaneously, joined other senior professors like Shri Abalakanta Choudhuri from Bankura Christan College, Sri Bhabani Bhattacharya from Surendranath College, Sri Kulada Prasad Roy Choudhury from Burdwan Raj College and Sri Himangshu Bimal Dey from Rajshahi University. At this stage, Prof. K. P.Ghosh began to organise the Department. He arranged to have a workshop equipped with a lathe machine and other fitting tools. Gradually the different B.Sc. Pass and Honours experiments were carried out in the Laboratory. Sri Babaji Barik, Sri Bibhuti Naskar, Sri Sadhan Bhattacharya, Sri Rakhal Pal were selected as Laboratory bearers and Sri Chandi Charan Pramanik as departmental office staff. All of them have rendered commendable and praiseworthy services.

Meanwhile, Prof. Jogendra Nath Chakraborty joined the college in May 1964 from Tamluk College when Revered Swami Mumukshanandaji Maharaj was the Principal of the College. Along with teaching, Prof. Chakraborty used to spend his off-time mostly in doing research at Jadavpur University. In the year 1966, he received the Ph.D.(Sc) degree. After the retirement of Prof. K. P. Ghosh and subsequently Prof. B. Bhattacharya, Dr. J. N. Chakraborty became the Head of the Department in the year 1967 and continued in that position till he retired in 1995. He is still taking M.Sc. classes in the college.

Dr. Chakraborty arranged to decorate the outer walls of the Department with portraits of world-famous Scientists like Prof. Jagadish Chandra Bose, Meghnad Saha, Satyendra Nath Bose, C. V. Raman, Albert Einstein, Heisenberg with brief biographical notes on them. The Seminar Library was equipped with up-to-date text books, advanced books of high standard, research books and a few journals for reference. Sophisticated instruments like Michelson interferometer with Febry Perot attachment, Babinets’ compensator, High frequency Oscillometer etc. were purchased under college science improvement programme, and with UGC assistance and assistance from Danforth Foundation at that time. The seminar lectures by- students as well as by famous professors like Prof. S. N. Ghosal, Shyamal kiz Sengupta, B. B. Baliga and many other such eminent persons were arranged every year. The academic record of the Department was high-profile with a large number of first classes every year and top ranks in university examinations most of the time, the tradition being maintained throughout.

Eventually, several young teachers—Dr. Ratan Lal Sarkar, Dr. Chandra Sekhar Roy, Dr. Asoke Bose, Dr. Arabinda Nag, Dr. Anandamoy Manna, Dr. Dhiraj Sardar, Dr. Prasanta Bhattacharya and many others joined the Dept. and served it for some years before taking up teaching assignments in different universities in India and abroad.

Then again young professors Sri Parimal Sengupta, Dr. Dipak Bhaumik, Dr. Mahadeb Das Khan, Sri Samaresh Chakraborty, Dr. Shibdas Bardhan Roy and Dr. Arun Kumar Tewari joined. They stayed back and nourished the Department. It became a unique combination of the young and old. Prof. U. S. Khan also helped the Department in many ways. At this juncture, Prof. H. N. Bose, Sri M. M. Ghosh, Sri S. R. Dash, Sri J. Dhar, Sri S. B. Dutta, Sri K. M. Sengupta, Sri S. K. Bose and many others joined in as senior professors.

In order to create an atmosphere of experimental research work, an air glow laboratory was set up on the roof of the college. Our ex-student Sri Subrata Kumar Midya did his Ph.D. degree working in this laboratory. Our ex-student and professor of our college Sri Dipak Bhaumik obtained Ph.D. (Sc) degree from Jadavpur University under the guidance of Dr. Jogendra Nath Chakraborty in the year 2001. While teaching in our college Sri Mahadeb Das Khan obtained his doctorate degree. Sri Parimal Sengupta wrote a few papers on diffraction gratings and in 2008, a joint paper under the guidance of Dr. J. N. Chakraborty was published.

After the retirement of Dr. J. N. Chakraborty, Prof. Parimal Sengupta became the Head of the Department in 1995. In his period, the post-graduate course in Physics was started in the year 2006. We have at present condensed Matter Physics as Special paper and Astrophysics as an elective paper. Most of the theoretical classes in Astrophysics are being taken in collaboration with Indian Centre for Space Physics, Kolkata.

Right now, the faculty consists of Dr. Debabrata Das, Dr. Malay Purkait, Dr. Tapas Kumar Ghosh, Dr. Soumen Mondal, Dr. Sobhan SOunda and Sri Kaushik Sarkar. Apart from that, a few retired professors from different colleges and universities and eminent professors from different research institutes like IACS, SINP etc. take classes in our department regularly both in the UG and in PG sections.

Regarding the present research activities of the department, Dr. M. Purkait has got a research grant from CSIR, DST and UGC (minor); Dr. D. Das and Dr. T. K. Ghosh have also got research grants from UGC (minor). All the three have ueen doing their research work till now in full swing. Dr. S. Mondal who was on lien from the college for two years and went to South Korea to do Post-doctoral 4.1work, has returned recently to join the Dept.