Neil Alden Armstrong

The American astronaut Neil Alden Armstrong, b. Wapakoneta, Ohio, Aug. 5, 1930, was the first person to walk on the Moon. Armstrong received his pilot’s license on his 16th birthday. After two years at Purdue University, he joined the navy and flew combat missions over Korea. He returned to Purdue, obtained his aeronautical engineering degree in 1955, and became a test pilot. At Edwards Air Force base he flew the X-15 rocket plane a total of seven times. In 1962 he was selected as an astronaut. His first flight (1966) was as commander of GEMINI 8; a thruster failure aborted the flight after 10 hr 41 min.

Armstrong was later assigned as commander of APOLLO 11, the first U.S. attempt to land on the Moon. On July 20, 1969, Armstrong and lunar module pilot Edwin E. ALDRIN landed the Apollo 11 lunar module Eagle on the Moon at the Sea of Tranquility. At 10:56:20 PM Eastern Daylight Time (EDT), he planted his left foot on the lunar surface and proclaimed: “That’s one small step for {a} man, one giant leap for mankind.” He later said that he intended to say “a,” but static on the tapes leaves this detail uncertain. Armstrong was later NASA deputy associate administrator for aeronautics. He retired from NASA in October 1971 to become a professor of engineering at the University of Cincinnati.

Devendra Lal

At 6.00 p.m. G.M.T. on November 22, 1973, an American astronaut, Edward Gibson, came out of Skylab-3 carrying a small packet. Crawling on the hull of the spacecraft on his life line he reached a pre-determined spot on the spacecraft and clamped the packet to it. More than two months later, on February 3, 1974, at the same hour, he came out again to retrieve the packet. This was not a space exercise but a vital scientific experiment which Devendra Lal and his colleague, S. Biswas, had proposed to the US National Aeronautical and Space Administration. The packet was a cosmic ray detector. To measure the intensity of cosmic rays in space was the purpose of the experiment.

When cosmic rays which come from space strike the surface of the earth, the ocean bed, the moon or a meteorite, they produce some nuclear changes and leave fine tracks in the rocks they traverse. Using a variety of techniques these “signatures” can be detected. As cosmic rays were present when the solar system was forming, their “signatures”, millions of years old, in the rocks could be used to shed light on that period.

Lal made extensive studies of meteorites, of lunar rocks brought by the Apollo and Luna Missions and of material from the ocean bed. He also evolved techniques to understand past events in the solar system from cosmic ray “signatures.” One of his most significant findings is that the intensity of cosmic rays during the last few million year has been the same as it is today.

Lal, one of the world’s leading geophysicists, is associated with the Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad. He is also visiting Professor of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California, USA.

Lal was born on February 14, 1929, in Varanasi. During his schools and college days he used to earn pocket money by selling cosmetics and varieties of ink he made at home. He joined the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research when he was only 20. Under the guidance of Prof. Bernard Peters, an eminent physicist, Lal learned the mysteries of research. No wonder he once remarked that “a good scientist should choose a good professor and learn from him the basic methods of science. Sitting at his feet is not sufficient, probably not even necessary”.

For his significant contributions he was awarded the S. S. Bhatnagar Award in 1967 and the Krishnan Medal in 1965. He is also Foreign Associate of the US National Academy of Sciences, a rare honour for any scientist.

Jayant Vishnu Narlikar

How did the universe, which is composed of stars, galaxies, nebulae, come into being? Philosophers and scientists have been pondering over this question for centuries.

Most scientists now believe that the universe came into being when a highly dense, atom-sized body exploded with a bang. Like a cracker the body threw away matter which later formed the stars, galaxies, nebulae and so on. This is called the “big bang” theory.

There is, however, one Indian astrophysicist, Jayant Vishnu Narlikar, who does not believe that a firm case has yet been made for this theory. In fact, at one time he was a firm believer in the rival “steady state” theory.

According to this theory the universe remains the same at all times, past, present or future. Matter in the form of stars, galaxies and other bodies is uniformly disturbed all over the universe. New matter is created to fill any gap that arises because of the motion of a galaxy or other bodies.

Apart from his work on the “steady state” theory, Narlikar worked in collaboration with his teacher, Fred Hoyle, on a new theory of gravitation, when he was hardly 26. The theory was then considered to be a breakthrough as significant as Einstein’s theory of relativity. In fact, the world hailed Narlikar as India’s Einstein.

Narlikar belongs to a family of mathematicians. He was born on July 19, 1938, at Kolhapur, Maharashtra, but was brought up in Varanasi in the house of his uncle, a mathematician. Every morning the uncle would write a mathematics problem on a blackboard and it would not be rubbed off until young Jayant had solved it. After doing his M.Sc. and Ph.D. from Banaras Hindu University, Narlikar went to Cambridge to do research under Fred Hoyle at King’s Collage. For his research work in astronomy he received several awards, medals and scholarships.

Narlikar returned home in home in 1972 and since then he was been Professor of Astrophysics at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. He is now working with his students on tachyons, which are faster than light particles, and “black holes”, highly contracted heavenly bodies of immense gravity. One spoonful of a “black hole” weighs as much as several tons and so it does not allow even light to escape from its surface. According to Narlikar, a “black hole” can absorb tachyons and reduce its own surface area. Therefore, one way to detect tachyons, he claims, is to look for “black holes” which are reducing in size.

Narlikar has worked hard to make science popular and is a science fiction writer.

Lawrence Hargrave

Lawrence Hargrave (1850 – 1915) was an engineer, explorer, astronomer, and aeronautical pioneer. Born in England, he emigrated to Australia with his family in 1865 and took on an engineering apprenticeship in Sydney. He worked as an engineer and assisted with exploration of the more remote parts of Australasia before taking up a post at the Sydney Observatory. He had been interested in experiments of all kinds from an early age, particularly those to do with flying machines, and when his father died, and Hargrave came into his inheritance, he resigned from the observatory to concentrate on full-time research.

In an astonishingly productive career, Hargrave invented many devices, but never once applied for a patent on any of them: he did not need the money, and he was a passionate believer in scientific communication as a key to furthing progress. As he wrote in 1893:

“Workers must root out the idea that by keeping the results of their labors to themselves a fortune will be assured to them. Patent fees are so much wasted money. The flying machine of the future will not be born fully fledged and capable of a flight for 1000 miles or so. Like everything else it must be evolved gradually. The first difficulty is to get a thing that will fly at all. When this is made, a full description should be published as an aid to others. Excellence of design and workmanship will always defy competition.”

Among many, three of Hargrave’s inventions were particularly significant:
Study of curved aerofoils, particularly designs with a thicker leading edge.
The box kite, which greatly improved the lift to drag ratio of early gliders and provided the structural rigidity and aerdynamic stability that made aeroplanes possible.
Work on the rotary engine, which was to power many early aircraft up until about 1920

Hargrave was devoted to his family, and when his son Geoffrey was killed at Gallipoli in May 1915 he was heartbroken, and died soon after hearing the news.

Buzz Aldrin

Dr. Buzz Aldrin was born Edwin Eugene Aldrin, Jr in Montclair, New Jersey on January 20, 1930. His mother was the ironically named, as it turned out, Marion Moon. Aldrin got a Dsc in Astronautics at M.I.T. He served in Korea, flying 66 combat missions. In October 1963, Buzz Aldrin became one of the third group of astronauts named by NASA.

With the Gemini Program Aldrin established the record for extra-vehicular activities and was the first man to take photographs of an eclipse of the sun from space.

On Apollo XI he made the first lunar landing with Neil Armstrong on July 20 1969.

Sunita Williams

Sunita “Suni” Williams, Born September 19, 1965 in Euclid, Ohio is a NASA astronaut. She was assigned to the International Space Station as a member of Expedition 14 and then joined Expedition 15. Williams is the second woman of Indian heritage to have been selected by NASA for a space mission after Kalpana Chawla and also the second astronaut of Slovenian heritage after Ronald M. Sega. She holds three records for female space travelers: longest spaceflight (188 days and counting), number of space walks (four), and total time spent on spacewalks (29 hours and 17 minutes).

Williams considers Needham, Massachusetts to be her hometown. She is married to Michael J. Williams, she is Indian-Slovenian American and has a pet Jack Russell Terrier named Gorby. Her recreational interests include running, swimming, biking, triathlons, windsurfing, snowboarding and bow hunting. She is an avid Boston Red Sox fan. Her parents are Deepak Pandya and Bonnie Pandya, who reside in Falmouth, Massachusetts. Dr. Deepak Pandya is a famous neuroanatomist. Williams’ roots on her father’s side go back to Gujarat in India and she has been to India to visit her father’s family. She is of Slovenian descent from her mother’s side.

Among the personal items Williams took with her to the International Space Station (ISS) are a copy of the Bhagavad Gita, a small figurine of Ganesha and some samosas.

After launching aboard Discovery, Williams arranged to donate her pony tail to Locks of Love. The haircut by fellow astronaut Joan Higginbotham occurred aboard the International Space Station and the ponytail was brought back to earth with the STS-116 crew.

In early March 2007 she received a tube of wasabi in a Progress spacecraft resupply mission in response to her request for more spicy food. Opening the tube, which was packaged at one atmospheric pressure, the gel-like paste was forced out in the lower-pressure of the ISS. In the free-fall environment, the spicy geyser was difficult to contain.

On April 16, 2007, she ran the first marathon by an astronaut in orbit. Williams finished the Boston Marathon in four hours and 24 minutes. The other crew members reportedly cheered her on and gave her oranges during the race. Williams’ sister, Dina Pandya, and fellow astronaut Karen L. Nyberg ran the marathon on Earth, and Williams received updates on their progress from Mission Control.