An Evening with Raman at the Gymkhana

Abstract

CV Raman was the Director of IISc from 1933 to 1937. It was in this period, in November 1935, that Kenneth Aston arrived as the professor and head of the Department of Electrical Technology. Uma Parameswaran, in her biography of Raman, writes that Aston was not Raman’s choice for the post and became “one of Raman’s bitterest foes”. The following is an account, from the IISc archives and by an unknown author, of an eventful Gymkhana meeting in 1936 that featured Raman, Aston, K Sreenivasan (Assistant Professor of Electrical Communication Engineering) and disgruntled students who took matters into their own hands.