The India Post, CHANDIGARH–August 12 : Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Germany has invited Dr. K.N. Pathak, Professor Emeritus and former Vice-Chancellor, P.U. to visit Research institutes and academic colleagues in Germany as well as to strengthen the ties between him and the Humboldt Foundation, Germany.
A communication to this effect has been received from Dr. Klaus Manderla, Alexander Von Humboldt, Stiftung/Foundation, Germany. This honour has been extended to Prof. Pathak in acknowledgement of his scientific achievements in specific academic field and in recognition of his contribution towards scientific cooperation with German colleagues. The invitation is for a period of two months.
The invitation includes a lump sum of EUR 600 as a subsidy towards his travel expenses to and from Germany as well as a subsidy of EUR 6,100 to cover the living expenses in Germany (including a subsidy for health insurance). In addition EUR 100 with each monthly payment will be paid as mobility allowance.
Author of more than 123 research papers in international journals, Prof. Pathak has a distinguished track record spanning over 35 years of teaching of physics in India and abroad. A founder member of Society for Scientific Values, Dr. Pathak was conferred Meghnad Saha Award in the year 1996 (awarded by U.G.C.). He has also been a Senior Associate Member, The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Trieste, Italy, 1992-98; has been winner of Alexander von Humbolt Senior Fellowship Award 1997; UGC
National Lecturer Award 1986-87; UGC National Fellowship Award 1991, Rajib Goyal Prize, Kurukshetra University, Kurukshetra – to name a few of many awards won by him.
Professor Pathak’s work makes distinct contributions to understanding of atomic motions in liquids. He has derived several exact sum rules for the dynamical correlation functions of density, currents and energy fluctuations and successfully applied them to the interpretation of experimental results. These results have also been used to make acceptable predictions of the transport coefficients of classical fluids. The demonstrations of the existence of two relaxation times are believed to be a general characteristic of liquids. Work on binary collision dynamics of realistic fluids is one of the important steps towards the microscopic theory of liquid state dynamics.
"Original contributions to study an anharmonic effects in solids are the derivation of new expressions for its thermodynamic and dynamical properties. The prediction of formation of two acoustic phonon bound states is an important contribution. Significant contributions are also made to the problem of excitations in liquid. Demonstrating the saturation of inter-action potential of a postronium atom near a metal surface and its exact evaluation additional important contributions".