Narasimhaiengar Mukunda

Narasimhaiengar Mukunda (born 25 January 1939, New Delhi, India) is an Indian theoretical physicist who is known for his expertise in particle Physics, mathematical Physics, mechanics and optics. His contributions to physics are many, prominent among them are representation theory of the Lorentz, Poincaré and other non-compact groups, Majorana and other relativistic wave equations, Fourier optics, Hamiltonian theories, quantum mechanics and optics classical dynamical formalism.

Education Mukunda's higher education began at Delhi University, where he graduated with B.Sc. (Hon) degree in 1953. For his Ph.D he studied at University of Rochester with E. C. G. Sudarshan and graduated in 1964. Mukunda’s thesis dealt with Hamiltonian mechanics, symmetry groups and elementary particles. He also studied group theory at Princeton University with Valentine Bargmann, including topological groups and Lie theory.

Research career He was a post-doctoral fellow at Syracuse University before he returned to India. In 1967, he became a Fellow at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. In 1969 he transferred to IISc, Bangalore. From 1972 to 2001 he served as professor at the Center for Theoretical Studies. IISER Mohali and IISER Thiruvananthapuram. He is also the Distinguished associate of Ramakrishna Mission Vivekananda Educational and Research Institute.

Awards He was awarded the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award, India's prestigious Scientist Award, in 1980 for his work in nonlinear and quantum optics. In 2016 Mukunda gave the Fifteenth Memorial V.G. Kulkarni Lecture: "The Nature of Scientific Knowledge: some reflections".

Selected publications According to Mathematical Reviews, Mukunda contributed to 143 scholarly publications, including 1974: (with George Sudarshan) Classical Dynamics: a modern perspective, John Wiley & Sons 1987: "The mathematical style of modern physics", pages 1 to 20 in Recent Developments in Theoretical Physics, World Scientific 1989: (with Rajiah Simon and Sudarshan) "Hamilton's theory of turns generalized to Sp(2,R)", Physical Review Letters 62(12): 1331–4 1989: (with R. Simon and George Sudarshan) "The theory of screws: a new geometric representation for the group SU(1,1"), Journal of Mathematical Physics 30(5): 1000–1006 1989: (with R. Simon and George Sudarshan) "Hamilton's turns and a new geometrical representation for polarization optics", Pramana 32(6): 769–92. 1989: (with R. Jagannathan, Rajiah Simon & E.C.G. Sudarshan) "Quantum theory of magnetic electron lenses based on the Dirac equation", Physics Letters A 134(8/9): 457 bibcode = 1989PhLA..134..457J pdf 1992: (with R. Simon) "Hamilton's turns and geometric phase for two-level systems", Journal of Physics A 25(22): 6135–44 1993: Twisted Gaussian Schell-model beams. I & II. Symmetry structure and normal-mode spectrum via Indian Academy of Sciences 1996: "Planetary Motions and the Birth of Classical Mechanics", Current Science 71(7): 527–32 1997: "Geometry, Fields, and Cosmology", Fundamental Theories of Physics 88, Kluwer (from First Inter-University Graduate School on Gravitation and Cosmology held in Pune, 1989) 1999: "Mathematics and the Physicist's Conception of Nature", Current Science 76(5): 634–9 2006: (with R. Simon, S. Chaturvedi, and V. Srinivasan) "Hamiltion's Turns for the Lorentz Group", International Journal of Theoretical Physics 45(11): 2051–2070 2010: (with Sunil Mukhi) Lectures on Advanced Mathematical Methods for Physicists, World Scientific, (Mukunda wrote part 2: Group Theory and Structure and Representations of Compact, Simple Lie Groups and Algebras.) 2017: (with Arvind and Chaturvedi) "Global aspects of polarization optics and coset space geometry", Physics Letters A 381(35): 3005–9