Anecdote from Dr. Kumar Easwaran

 An Anecdote concerning Dr AGK’s curiosity and ability to quickly learn entirely new subjects:

Dear Anjali,

 This 40 year old incident concerning your father is indelible in my mind.

 It was 1982 and I had just come back from the Ohio State University where I was a post doctoral researcher.

 One day Dr AGK called me to his room and asked me to explain the research I had done there. It was on a highly mathematical subject concerning the scattering of sound waves by under water objects. Briefly put: it was required to precisely predict the “echo” of a sound wave (sonar pulse)  when it impinges on an underwater steel object. The process involved the conversion of sound energy to vibratory energy of the object and back to sound energy.

 Though it was not his field Dr. AGK’s  curiosity was immediately aroused,  he asked me so many questions and required so much detail that I had no recourse but to go to the black board and derive all the equations! In those days PowerPoint presentations didn’t exist. The discussion and conversation we had was very illuminating and in fact exhilarating…..

Time passed and I  discovered that more than three hours had elapsed and all the time Dr AGK’s attention was unwavering, his questions penetrating and his understanding perfect -  even of subjects like wave scattering,  Green’s functions, integro - partial differential equations and asymptotic behaviour of Bessel functions…

   It was then, that he suggested we should work on a joint project with Naval Physical and Oceanographic Laboratory, Cochin; a proposal which fructified.

  Well, Anjali, this was what your father was - made from a rare mould!

Stay safe and God Bless!

Dr Kumar Eswaran

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