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| Calcutta University Science College Alumni Association |
c/o Dr. Tarak Bhar
2008 Great Falls Street, McLean, VA 22101, USA
Email: dsom@cpcweb.com
or tbhar@erols.com
Newsletter Volume 2.1 November 1998
Another Year
1998: The Year At A Glance
CUSCAA Events
Awards
Books
Web Page
Acknowledgements
Another year has gone by. CUSCAA has now become a part of our lives. CUSCAA is so much a part of our lives that we have started taking it for granted. The time has, therefore, come for a little self-appraisal. Three years of existence is not a long period for introspection and yet, we feel that the time is now ripe for consolidation of CUSCAA as an organization. The decisions that we take in these crucial times will determine where the future lies for CUSCAA. Normally, an annual get-together is a time for camaraderie and patting each other on the back. We have a lot to show for ourselves in terms of our accomplishments in the last year but we also must do some soul-searching. Could we have done better?
We are proud to announce that our members Dr. Santimoy Basu and Dr. (Mrs.) Sunanda Basu donated four Pentium computers to the Computer Center of the University. Sri. T. K. Mukherjee, Registrar, acknowledged the receipt and thanked the members profusely.
The Bose family was also invited to a seminar held in the Calcutta University to commemorate the great achievements of a scientist "who shunned crass commercialization of inventions". The scientist was Acharya (Sir) Jagadish Chandra Bose who did not share the 1909 Nobel Prize with the Italian Physicist Gugliemo Marconi for the discovery of wireless communications.
Professor Prasanta Kumar Roy, Director of the Bose Institute, Calcutta, acknowledged the research done by scientific historian Probir Bandyopadhya of Houston that has straightened out the records. "While Jagadish Bose announced the invention in an 1889 paper at the Royal Society in London, Marconi", writes Bandyopadhya, "was like a honeybee collecting honey from different flowers, and he never gave credit to those who deserved it." It is now established that Marconi had used iron-mercury coherer, earlier invented by Sir J.C.Bose as the receiver in his landmark experiment. A belated recognition for an alumni!
It is also time to congratulate another Calcuttan who is at the center of attention of the entire world. Professor Amartya Sen, a doyen of Presidency College and the Calcutta University has finally found his place among the greatest economists of all times by getting the Nobel Prize in 1998. The recognition has come at a time when the whole western world is puzzled with the apparent failure of policies of private sector led growth that they helped to establish in most of East Asia. For some time now, the study of economics was equated with efforts to create wealth. What people forgot was that wealth is not merely paper money, wealth is also the creation of better human beings. Sen’s work brings the whole focus back on development policies. Congratulations, Professor Sen.
The work of CUSCAA drew the attention of the media. Pratidin, a Bengali daily, ran an article in their May 3, 1998 edition about CUSCAA. Smt. Purabi Chakraborty in her weekly column covered the activities of CUSCAA, and mentioned that CUSCAA in its first year itself has been able to establish an emotional bond with those currently at the helm of affairs at the institution. We are grateful to her for conveying our message to the Calcuttans; we hope that we will expand our activities to strengthen this bond and make some contributions for which we all can be proud of.
The Working Committee met four times during the year to discuss the work program of CUSCAA. The details about the events and activities were decided in these meetings and the financial positions were also discussed.
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Annual Meeting, 1997
The Annual General Meeting and family get-together held on November 8, 1997 at the Briggs Channy Middle school was a great success. The meeting ended with a cultural evening and a contributory dinner.
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Dr. Sunanda Basu Donating Pentium Computer
Most of the members were present, along with their families and enjoyed the musical programs and the mime show that were arranged during the evening.
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Cultural Show at 1997 Annual Meeting
The Annual Picnic was held at the Black Hill Regional park on June 13, ‘98. The picnic was a great success. It was a day when the weather started magnificently but turned a little nasty later as the day wore on. But the strong winds and the heavy downpour did not dampen the spirit of the members who stayed on for an impromptu concert.
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Picnic, 1997
We ended last year’s annual meeting with the resolution that we will institute CUSCAA awards for the students who stood first in B.Sc. (Hons.) and are pursuing M.Sc. at the Science College. Considering our resource constraint it was decided that we will select 3 to 4 subjects / departments every year on a rotational basis.
Members Ranjit Dasgupta and Madhuchhanda Mukhopadhyay took the initiative to establish contact with the departments of Chemistry, Botany and Zoology and formally got the names of the three students of our alma mater who will be the first recipients of the CUSCAA awards; the respective departments at some formal ceremony will present the awards.
The award will carry a cash prize of $100 and a certificate from CUSCAA.
CUSCAA and its members have sent the following books to the Science College:
Member Tarak Bhar donated the following books to the Department of Applied Physics:
1. Electric Circuits, James W. Nilsson & Susan A. Ridel, 1996.
2. Signals and Systems, Alan V Oppenheim & Alan S. Willsky, 1997.
Member Dilip Som has been kind enough to provide server space for the CUSCAA website: (www.cpcweb.com/cuscaa.html), and during the year has overseen its maintenance and update on a regular basis. Dilip is working on a database of CUSCAA members from the Washington area and other parts of North America, complete with email addresses, to enable us to interact more easily among ourselves as well as with our contact persons in the Science College, Calcutta.
We encourage the members to visit the home page more frequently and give us feedback on how we can make it more effective.
Many of our members and their spouses have devoted their valuable time for various CUSCAA activities. The Working Committee acknowledges their support and hope that the same will be continued.
