Aiyasami Jayaraman (1927-2022)
Aiyasami Jayaraman (1927-2022)
(photo credits)
Professor Dr Aiyasami Jayaraman --popularly known as AJ among the world high-pressure community-- passed away on April 1st, 2022 in Phoenix,Arizona USA, at the age of 95. He was surrounded by close family members and high-pressure condensed matter physicists. He was an outstanding experimental physicist and great human being.
Professor AJ was born on December 5th, 1926 in Marathurai, a small village near Kumbakonam, a intellectually rich Cauvery delta region of Tamil Nadu, India. Professor AJ moved to Bengaluru to work with Professor Sir C. V. Raman on November 10th, 1949 and continued for the next 11 years with a close contact with Professor Sir C. V. Raman. His research career started under the guidance of Professor Sir C. V. Raman at the Raman Institute in Bangalore where he earned his PhD. Professor AJ left RRI in October 1960, and joined the University of California at Los Angeles on a post-doctoral offer and started high-pressure Research with Professor George Kennedy of the Institute of Geophysics as his mentor. Professor AJ became an assistant geophysicist at the Institute of Geophysics, UCLA, Los Angeles, California, from October 1960-June 1963. Then AJ joined Bell Telephone Laboratories, Murray Hill, New Jersey, USA, in July 1963, and continued there till retirement in 1990.
He had a productive scientific career in the field of high-pressure studies and diamond anvil cell techniques at Bell Labs until the end of 1990. Bell Labs (he used to call) was a Mecca for condensed matter physics and communication technology at that time, as it produced eight Nobel Laureates in 40 years, with an environment that encouraged collaborative research efforts. He visited CSIR-National Aerospace Laboratories and concurrently a visiting Professor at Indian Institute of Science during 1970-71 in initiating interests in high-pressure physics. He was a source of inspiration to many Indian high pressure physicists. He then joined the University of Hawaii as a visiting professor. After 5 years in Hawaii, he officially retired and moved to Tampa, Florida. He used to visit India during the winter music festivals every year regularly and he spent his quality time with many experimental physicists. His contributions in the area of mineralogy is remarkable. His first paper was on the structure of labraodorite and the origin of its iridescence authored by C. V. Raman and AJ. Proc. Ind. Acad. Science 32 A,1-16, 1950. Professor AJ and C. V. Raman contributed to the understanding of Ceylon moonstones, luminescence of diamond, feldspars, chalcedony, opal, and amethyst, during 1950. Then Professor AJ contributed to the understanding of the polymorphic phase transitions in InSb (Nature 191, 1288, 1961), Cesium (Phys. Rev. B. 126, 1363, 1962) Uranium (Phys. Rev. B 129, 1971, 1963), Barium (Phys. Rev. Lett. 10, 387, 1963), Bismuth, Titanium, Zirconium, Calcium, Strontium (jointly co-authored with G. C. Kennedy). His work on valence transition in rare-earth metals like Gd, Sm, Yb, Ce, (1964–1968 along with R. C. Sherwood) form a classic foundation form mixed valence transition. Pressure-induced first order transitions of metal-insulator and structural and electronic phase transitions in mono chalcogenides, and rare earth oxides like EuO (Phys. Rev. Lett. 29, 1674, 1972), and metal-insulator transitions in transition metal oxides (Phys. Rev. Lett. 34, 547, 1975); CeP (Phys. Rev. Lett. 36, 366, 1976); Cr-Si alloys (Phys. Rev. Lett.37, 926, 1976) form the basics of the understanding of the insulator metal transitions in solids.
Till 1958, Professor AJ served as the chief Editor of Current Science, and he dealt with meticulous reviewing (with all fairness) letters and articles submitted to the Current Science. In nineties he published a couple of articles in Current Science dealing with high pressure phenomena in solids, and also organized a special issue to gem materials.
He jointly with Professor Anant Krishna Ramdas, (1988). wrote a beautiful book on C. V. Raman to educate and inspire the Young generation to do research in India. Many young physicists came to learn about Professor CV Raman only through this popular book. His review article on “Diamond anvil cell and high-pressure physical investigations” (Rev. Mod. Phys. 55, 65 – Published 1 January 1983), was cited more than 1600 times. His review article in Review of Scientific Instruments Jayaraman, Aiyasami (1986) Ultrahigh pressures Review of Scientific Instruments, 57 (6). pp. 1013-1031. ISSN 0034-6748 was cited more than 540 times. He played a vital role in setting up the high-pressure facilities at National Aerospace Laboratories, Bangalore. He established a Diamond-Anvil-Cell--based micro Raman high-pressure laboratory at the Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Science, and guided the Mineral Physics program at CSIR-National Geophysical Research Institute, Hyderabad, in 1991-1992.
Professor A. Jayaraman was elected as a Fellow of Indian Academy of Sciences in 1955 and served as Council member: 1955-60, Treasurer: 1955-60. He was awarded the Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship Award in 1970, the Alexander von Humboldt fellowship 1979-80, he was elected Fellow of the American Physical Society 1969, and awarded the Krishnan Gold medal of the Indian Geophysical Union in 1969.
Contributed by Dr G. Parthasarathy FNA, FRSC, FTAS, FISSA, President of the Indian Social Science Academy