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Sulochana Gadgil - Session 01
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OH-002-8-1
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(0:00) Parents and childhood
Gadgil was born in 1944 in Pune. Her father was a medical practitioner, and her mother was a “literary figure”. She adds that her family was progressive and emphasized education for girls. She recounts that they lived in the “heart of Pune”, first in Sadashiv Peth and then in Prabha Chowk. She did her primary schooling in a Marathi medium school in Pune. She then recalls that many of her cousins – whose parents worked in the Indian Railways – were going to Rishi Valley School, and so her parents decided to send her and her older sister to the school as well. She recalls that Rishi Valley School had a very “unique atmosphere”. She was there for three and a half years.
She then returned to Pune to do her undergraduate degree in Bachelor's in Sciences from Fergusson College. She speaks about her undergraduate college experience. She then did her Masters in Applied Mathematics from Pune University. She speaks about the freedom movement and her family’s involvement in it. Her grandfather, V.D. Pathak was a doctor and a freedom fighter part of the Mulshi Satyagraha. She says that Senapati Bapat stayed at her house and that there were always people planning strategies for the freedom movement; their living room began to be called the Liberty Hall. Her father, Y.D Pathak was also a doctor. He had a practice in allopathy as well as Ayurveda and yoga. Her mother, Indumati Pathak was married after 12th-standard. She did her Bachelors in arts after having her first two children. Gadgil recalls the upbringing given by her mother: her mother with four daughters went for plays and had many conversations around the dinner table. Her father stayed late at the dispensary, so he wasn’t present at dinner.
Sulochana Gadgil is the 3rd daughter.
(00:05:53) Experiences at Rishi Valley School
She was 11 years old when she went to Rishi Valley and joined either the 4th or the 5th class. She says she picked up English quickly and noted that the presence of Marathi-speaking students made it easier to communicate with other students. She attended higher-level mathematics classes, which was possible at Rishi Valley School. She further describes the atmosphere at Rishi Valley. She returned to Pune to give her 11th grade exam. She recounts that she didn’t give her 11th grade exam at Rishi Valley because of her older sister’s experience. Gadgil’s father, was concerned about Gadgil’s grades and therefore decided to call her back to Pune to give the exam. The 11th grade exam was the Secondary School Leaving Certificate (SSLC) and after the exam is college. She was 14 years at the time of the exam. She notes that Rishi Valley gave her a passing certificate a year early, saying that this was acceptable at Rishi Valley. She adds that she didn’t think she was not educated up to the 10th and that studying for the SSLC exam was difficult because she had to catch up on two years of study.
(00:09:07) Fergusson College and MSc
She speaks about the structure of her undergraduate degree. She adds that in the 1960s, 11th grade was considered as pre-degree and the 12th grade was considered as pre-professional. The subjects she chose in her undergraduate degree were chemistry, physics and mathematics. She knew she wanted to study mathematics but didn’t have an idea about what career she wanted. She wanted to continue in mathematics and therefore did her Masters in the subject. She adds that there were only exams during her Masters.
(00:11:05) Madhav Gadgil and marriage
She mentions that Madhav Gadgil was also a student at Fergusson College and recounts how they met. He was doing his undergraduate degree in biology and then went to Bombay to do a Master's degree in marine biology. He wanted to go abroad for his Ph.D. Madhav’s mother wanted him to marry an Indian girl before he went abroad. He knew of Sulochana through college. She mentions that he knew that she did well academically, so he suggested her name. He also wanted someone who wanted to get a higher education. She speaks about when Madhav's mother came to Sulochana's house with a marriage proposal. She says that the Gadgils were a well-known and respectable family, mentioning D.R. Gadgil, a prominent economist. Year: 1964.
(00:14:43) Applying for PhD
Gadgil recounts that they wanted to apply for Ph.D. abroad rather than looking for a job in India. She didn’t have an idea of what to apply her maths to. Madhav Gadgil suggested that she apply her maths to physical oceanography. Out of the universities they applied to, two universities gave them admission with scholarships: British Columbia and Harvard. They chose Harvard. They got married in June 1965, and in September 1965, they went to the US. She recounts that she didn’t actively didn’t look up the faculty while applying. She filled in the required details in the application form. She adds that none of her family had gone abroad before. Madhav Gadgil’s father and brother had gone abroad to Cambridge to study. She adds that Madhav Gadgil got admission after a meeting with Harvard Professor Giles Mead in Bombay.
(00:17:56) USA and Harvard
She recounts their stay at Harvard. She and Madhav Gadgil went together, and Harvard was friendly. She speaks about the host program; a senior student would take care of the new students. She recounts that she thought the Harvard people would be more intelligent, but she later reassessed.
The only researcher studying physical oceanography at Harvard was Allan Robinson. She talks about Harvard and the coursework, describing the place as “strict but open”. Robinson made her audit many varied courses. She speaks about students and mentions that there were few female students at Harvard. She speaks about the activist life at Harvard and the various talks she heard, such as anti-Vietnam talks. She notes that the place was interdisciplinary, which helped them make friends from different places. She speaks about evolutionary biologists and her acquaintance with them. She mentions that she wore a sari and rode a bicycle at Harvard, making her stand out. She talks about the attitude of American students, and she recounts that they weren’t racist. She talks about the literature she read about racism, such as books on the Apartheid movement in South Africa.
(00:24:16) Research at Harvard
She recalls that Allan Robinson wanted to solve how the Gulf Stream meanders, and he suggested she work on the problem. She says that Harvard taught her how to mathematically model. There were a few advantages of working at Harvard; she mentions the proximity of Harvard, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She could attend talks at these three institutes allowing her to meet many people working in this domain.
She speaks about Jule Charney and the course he taught on fluid dynamics. She enjoyed his teaching style and how he frequently recited poetry in the middle of lectures. She recounts that he was the father of atmospheric physics. The switch from physical oceanography to atmospheric dynamics was not difficult as the fields studied different fluids. She speaks about how she joined Jules Charney’s lab. She recalls that Charney was happy with a term paper she had done with him. Madhav Gadgil finished his Ph.D. one year ahead, and Harvard had offered him a faculty position for three years. She wanted to work on the monsoon, and she suggested that she could work as a post-doctoral researcher at Charney’s lab. She asked Charney, and he took her. She recounts that Charney introduced her to TM Krishnamurthy at Florida State University and helped them collaborate. She adds that Harvard was also thinking of hiring her, but she and Madhav Gadgil didn’t want to stay in the USA and start a family there.
(00:31:17) Returning to India and working in Pune at IITM
They returned to Pune, India, and joined as Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) pool officers. She had written to the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM) earlier, but she got no response. They came to Pune because it was their hometown and because both IITM and IMD were in Pune and the Maharashtra Association for the Cultivation of Sciences (MACS), where Madhav Gadgil could join.
(00:32:17) Work and Atmosphere in Jule Charney’s office
She doesn’t remember what work she did while she was a post-doctoral student with Charney. She audited a course by Edward Lorenz and went to seminars. She worked with Charney but didn’t publish a paper with him.
(00:34:15) Work at IITM and with D.R. Sikka
Sulochana Gadgil speaks about sharing an office with D.R. Sikka and Y. Ramanath while working at IITM. She was interested in the monsoon and the theories of V. Ramaswamy. She spoke to Sikka about it, and he took her to see the weather charts, and they collected data. The data was related to the influence of mid-latitude circulation on monsoon. Charney developed his theory of Intertropical Convergence Zones (ITCZ). Sikka and others at IITM were interested in ITCZ. Ramanath was interested in numerical weather prediction (NWP). Sulochana Gadgil says that she still had data and the original NWP codes from her time at Harvard and MIT, which she gave to Ramanath. She recalls that the office they shared was different from a typical government office, calling the workplace “wonderful”. She reflects Sikka’s work ethic, saying he would stay back in the evening to work on research problems. Sikka was very well versed in the research literature, especially those by Indian researchers. She further remembers that Sikka did not get a promotion at IITM for eight years due to internal politics, and she adds that that didn’t bother Sikka.
(00:37:20) On joining Indian Institute of Science (IISc)
Sulochana Gadgil says that she never spoke to Satish Dhawan about the job at IISc. She recounts that P.K. Das had spoken to Dhawan about hiring a meteorologist. Dhawan was a fluid dynamicist and was interested in the monsoon. He wanted someone at IISc to study atmospheric dynamics. She mentions that IISc had people working on fluid dynamics and aerodynamics. Shankar Rao was hired before Sulochana Gadgil. She gives her opinion that it is difficult for meteorologists to interact with other scientists. Though Shankar Rao was a good scientist, she wasn’t sure the meteorology department could grow under his leadership. Satish Dhawan asked Das if he knew any meteorologists who then mentioned it to Sikka. Sikka referred Das to Gadgil. She comments on Das’s personality, calling him a “peculiar man”. Das told Dhawan that Gadgil might not want to join IISc because she and her husband had a house in Pune. She recounts that this was “amazing thinking for a scientist”. She mentions that Sikka was “a genuine scientist” and that he told her to apply to Dhawan since there is no better place than IISc to do research. She also sent Madhav Gadgil’s application. She mentions that Dhawan and E.C.G. Sudarshan started the Centre for Theoretical Studies in 1972. Its charter noted that it would be a centre for theoretical scientists from any discipline. They gave a seminar at IISc after which they were offered jobs.
(00:41:29) Moving to IISc and starting a family
Sulochana Gadgil recounts that they did not have their children in the USA because they didn’t want them to have the choice of being American citizens. They started their family in 1972. She says that shifting to Bangalore was tough with the baby. Gadgil mentions that finding houses in Bangalore was difficult. She says that today IISc has lots of faculty housing. They both enjoyed being with children, and they were conscientious parents. She recounts that it was tough for her since she had to run the house. An old domestic worker who had worked for Madhav Gadgil’s family, Sakharam, came to Bangalore with them, and his additional support helped. She adds that she couldn’t publish as much as she could have done without a family. She mentioned that she was okay with not publishing as much. She didn’t want to be a part of the rat race, attributing this, in part, to Rishi Valley School’s atmosphere. She speaks about women in the workplace today who are “career-minded” and push for paper publications. She says she didn’t get promoted in her first year at IISc because she hadn’t published enough papers. The following year she got an early promotion. She says she doesn’t think she’s lost out on much. She also mentions that finances were not an issue with two people earning money. Their son was born in 1974. She speaks about child care at IISc. Sudarshan decided that there wouldn’t be any teaching at CTS, and he wanted the faculty to collaborate with other scientists. She didn’t have the pressure of teaching, and she was free to work whenever she wanted.
(00:49:02) Work at CTS and the paper on northward propagation of monsoon
She organized seminars and workshops at IISc with fluid dynamists to discuss research problems on the monsoon. She recalls when M.P. Singh from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi, came for one of the seminars and noticed that the team at IISc was also interested in similar problems in meteorology. She recounts that M.P. Singh was the enterprising organizer. In 1977, he organized an international meeting where she gave a talk on the orography of the monsoon. At this meeting, she spoke to Charney. Charney had worked on how desertification can have an impact on the monsoon. He suggested to Sulochana Gadgil that she and her colleagues should look at satellite pictures. Sikka was trained in satellite meteorology under the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). Sikka had collected satellite images that NOAA had distributed. Sikka knew how to identify the rain bands using an infrared technique, and then they began looking at what the rain bands were doing over the Indian longitudes. They looked at data from May to October over five years. He knew of a paper showing that "the trough at 700 millibars (3 km from the Earth's surface) is the centre of the rainy belt". Sikka also made them look at data at the 700 millibar trough, which Gadgil says made their work relevant. They made observations by seeing the brightness of the cloud band. They discovered new features of the monsoon cloud band over the equatorial region that keeps moving northward every 30 to 40 days year after year. They showed that the larger meteorological system at play was the same as Charney's ITCZ. She says that many researchers didn't grasp the paper's significance until later. They did more work that contested the land-sea breeze hypothesis.
(00:54:40) Climate research group and BOMEX, ARMEX and MONTBLEX
She, Sikka, and colleagues at IISc, such as Roddam Narasimha and J. Srinivasan, worked on the Indian Climate Research Proposal. They realized a need for concerted efforts. They needed to list the critical areas of study in Indian meteorology. They realized that they had never done an observational program. They drafted a science plan for the Indian climate research program with ten years for implementation. She notes that the Indian International Ocean Expedition wasn’t something Indians started, and it was all foreign. At IISc, G.S. Bhat, an engineer, brought expertise in observational experimentation to carry out observational fieldwork. Under Narasimha’s leadership, she says observational projects such as MONTBLEX were taken forward. Sulochana Gadgil talks about the support government departments such as the Department of Science and Technology (DST), and the Department of Defence (DOD) gave the projects. She recalls that CLIVAR (Climate and Ocean: Variability, Predictability, and Change) triggered the beginning of the observational projects. An Indian researcher abroad contacted them, saying their team would do observational experiments in India, which the IISc team refused. The team at IISc which included Sulochana Gadgil came up with a science plan. They went to the DST secretary and other funding agencies for funds. Further support came from IMD and IITM. She notes that it was essential to get support from IITM and IMD because individuals from these two organizations will be at the site of the project handling various equipment for experiments and observations.
(01:00:03) Setting up Centre for Atmospheric and
Oceanographic Science
Roddam Narasimha proposed to set up a Centre for Atmospheric Science. After taking on feedback from colleagues at IISc, he presented a proposal for the Centre to the Ministry of Education. It was in the 1980s. The Centre had researchers from IISc, but none were meteorologists. She recounts Narayana Iyengar, a civil engineer and an expert in stochastic processes, was the first person who became associated with the Centre. Many others associated with Narasimha and who were working on the boundary layer project became associate faculty at the new Centre.
Sulochana Gadgil explains that Narasimha thought monsoon research needed a “good push.” They required a core team of researchers to study the monsoon. Sulochana Gadgil and Shankar Rao were two, but Narasimha wanted more people. B.N. Goswami, one of the Centre’s first hires.
After Sulochana Gadgil became chairman of the Centre, they hired Bhat. Bhat came to work with Narasimha instead of going to Caltech. DOD wanted to support the new Centre, for which she wrote a proposal. The DOD wanted ocean in the name, so they changed it to CAOS. They then got Sengupta. After she stepped down from Chairman of CAOS, J. Srinivasan took over. She says he was a good teacher and a good judge of people, hiring several new researchers. They hired Ravi Nanjundiah because they needed someone competent in computer models.
(01:05:14) Work on monsoon, agriculture and economics
Gadgil recounts that she got interested in monsoon and agriculture because, “Everybody talks about how important the monsoons are, but there was never any data about the monsoons were actually important.” She recounts contacting people regarding the monsoon’s effect on agriculture. A.B. Joshi was an agricultural expert. He told her to reach people at International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT). She visited and developed a good rapport with them. They collaborated with the farmers, which gave her the exposure to agriculture that she needed. Madhav Gadgil had a student, Seshagiri Rao. He was a farmer and student of ecology at IISc. CAOS and the Centre for Ecological Studies (CES) shared the same building, and that is how she knew him. She recounts the incident of rain in Pavagada. Sulochana Gadgil and Seshagiri Rao had different observations; Seshagiri said it shouldn’t be raining in October-November in Pavagada, while Sulochana Gadgil said such rain was expected for Karnataka. She recounts inquiring into the different varieties the farmers were growing. She says the farmers there used to grow long-duration varieties, but later a short-duration variety was imported from Coimbatore, giving good yield for a few years. But the short-duration variety needed to be harvested in October. Sulochana Gadgil says that she and Seshagiri wrote papers on the value of forecasts and what benefits forecasts. She mentions the Umbrella problem that farmers had: whether it would rain or not rain. Seshagiri had good knowledge of agriculture, and he knew many farmers and discussed the economics of their farming with them. She mentions that their first paper was on forecasts. Sulochana Gadgil recounted an incident when farmers came to IISc. The farmers said that Gandhi Krishi Vigyana Kendra (GKVK) gave them recommendations. They recommended that dryland, rain-fed farmers sow groundnut. She elaborates on the farmer’s agriculture practices. She says that GKVK made recommendations on when to sow groundnut and sow soya. The farmers reported that the advice was wrong and asked the group at IISc to help them out. She recounts a scientist Pyarasingh at ICRISAT, who had a groundnut model validated for the Anantapur region. She and her colleagues validated a crop model. They used rainfall data and the crop model and derived the variability. Using that model, Sulochana Gadgil notes, they found that the farmers were right about the sowing dates. She speaks about how such an approach could be used for the Pavagada region. They took these results back to the farmers. She adds that a particular farmer, Lakshman, discussed which stage is the most sensitive for a plant. The farmer answered that it was the pod-filling stage. The results of the experiments Sulochana Gadgil and her collaborators carried out also validated the farmer’s observation. She speaks about how this led to future work with International Research Institute (IRI).
She opines that agricultural scientists aren’t considering the farmers’ requirements and that the “cost-benefit ratio of strategies” isn’t calculated. She adds that she doesn’t think enough collaborative work exists between farmers and scientists in India. Many agricultural scientists have moved to climate change. She moved on to other work because of a lack of response on the part of institutes and governmental organizations. She speaks about an incident where she was told that her recommendations to use crop pigeon pea weren’t necessary. She thought that people aren’t thinking of these matters and science in an interdisciplinary way. She adds that many organizations only prepare a package and “preach” but do not have a network to get feedback about their recommendations. Mentions that there are “like minded” individuals who are working on agricultural research.
[Archivist’s note: Break in interview from 01:19:20 to 01:20:52]
[01:17:18 - 01:17:20 - Restricted Access. Contact archives@ncbs.res.in for details]
(01:23:05) Work on agriculture and GDP
She says that the media talks about the monsoon’s effect on the GDP. She also worked similarly on the GDP problem and approached economists. She says there is data on GDP and food grains. She and her son would discuss the GDP and monsoon link. They then began to work on it together. They found out “quantitative assessment of monsoon on GDP and agriculture.” IITM had done previous work on the impact on food grain. GDP hadn’t been assessed.
(01:25:10) Publishing from India
Sulochana Gadgil recounts that it was difficult to publish her work with Indian collaborators. It wasn’t tricky publishing while she was at Harvard, and she adds that the “address matters.” She wrote a single-author paper at Harvard on the Gulf Stream jets and recalled that she had no trouble publishing the paper. She remembers that the paper she wrote with Sikka faced issues during publication, and it was only published after Tetsuzo Yasunari published similar work using satellite images. She says that today India has more credibility. She mentions that she didn’t have connections with journal editors. She recalls she began working on the SST Threshold after Ed (?) requested her to speak about the ocean and monsoon connection at a seminar. They submitted the paper to the Journal of Atmospheric Sciences. She says their research showed “outstanding results,” but the publisher rejected it. She gave a presentation at a conference organized by Adrian Gill and Ed. Adrian Gill heard the presentation. Sulochana Gadgil and he decided to submit a short piece on the work to Nature. She adds, “Only fools used to submit to Nature in those days,” because the paper would be rejected. Nature accepted the paper because of Adrian Gill. Later papers validated their work. She recounts incidents when she has been asked to write correspondences for journals. She recounts an incident when a co-student, George Philander, asked her to write a review paper for Annual Reviews on the land-sea breeze hypothesis. She says that if she wants to publish fast, she publishes in Indian journals and asks for reviews from established names in the field. She tells her students not to add her name to the papers saying that certain people don’t want her to get credit, mentioning “foreign editors” and their “petty jealousies.”
(01:31:13) Leaving CTS to start CAOS
She says that it wasn’t her decision but the director’s (C.N.R. Rao) to start CAOS. Madhav Gadgil got his funding to set up CES, while Narasimha got the budget to set up CAOS which Sulochana Gadgil helped set up. She recalled that C.N.R. Rao had said that since both she and Madhav had set up two new institutes in their own field, they didn’t need to remain at CTS.
(01:32:40) Work on Indian Dipole oscillation and EQUINOO
Sulochana Gadgil recounts that 2002 was an “intriguing drought” and “no one had predicted it.” Dr. R.R. Kelkar, the then director of IMD, called a meeting to discuss 2002. In the 1980s, Sikka established that monsoon variability is due to ENSO. During El Nino, one expects drought, and during La Nina, one expects heavy monsoons. But 2002 didn’t have a strong El Nino. In 1997, when there was the strongest El Nino of the century, India got average rainfall. She says that these observations defied the above rule. There were successive droughts in 1986 and 1987, and the latter part of the year was an El Nino. They were following satellite images trying to predict the weather patterns of 2003. Meanwhile, they were working on the Indian Ocean Dipole. It is an oceanic feature but a coupled phenomenon. The 1997 year showed a strong positive IOD event, and in such events, monsoon is favoured. The author of the IOD paper was Vinayachandran, Sulochana Gadgil’s student, and Toshio Yamagata, with whom Vinayachandran worked in Japan. P. Francis and Sulochana Gadgil wondered about the IOD problem. When Vinayachandran returned to IISc, they started working on it. That is how EQUINOO was discovered. She recalls that her son participated in this project. Sulochana Gadgil, along with her students, looked at ENSO and EQUINOO. When they factored in both phenomena, they saw that they could explain extreme weather phenomena. She says that when they plotted both on a graph, one could see a separation between the drought years and the years with excess monsoons. They needed to know if the separation was significant. Sulochana Gadgil says her son helped derive statistics from showing the significance, and they found a significant difference.
(01:37:53) Modelling and computers at IISc
Sulochana Gadgil says that the equations used for modelling were complicated, and she knew about modelling during her Ph.D. She didn’t work in modelling. J Srinivasan was in IIT Kanpur, and he visited Narasimha at IISc. He shifted to IISc because he liked the environment. He was a mechanical engineer, and he was interested in radiation. He joined CAOS. He picked up climate dynamics. He knew how to model. Ravi Nanjundiah later joined, and J Srinivasan trained him. She recounts that Peter Webster read Sikka and Sulochana Gadgil’s paper on ITCZ, and he was excited. He made a simple model, and his model predicted northward propagations. She recounts that he was excited when he found out his model’s prediction had been observed. She and Ravi Nanjundiah and J Srinivasan subsequently worked on Peter Webster’s model. She doesn’t remember when computers were introduced at IISc. She recalls computers were at Harvard in the 1960s.
(01:41:41) Retirement
Sulochana Gadgil says that she didn't have to decide to retire; the rules in India dictated her retirement. She says that Madhav Gadgil retired when he was 60. The following year the retirement age shifted to 62. She adds that they moved to Pune after their retirement because Madhav Gadgil enjoys Marathi, and IITM and IMD are located in Pune, where she can continue to work. She works from home. She is (at the time of the recording) working on the monsoon of 2021 and 2022. She says that due to the COVID-19 pandemic, she has not been able to visit Bangalore for two years. Most of her collaborative work has happened through phone conversations.
(01:44:09) Time as Chairman of CAOS
Sulochana Gadgil says the goal as the chairman of CAOS was to nurture the department in the core areas. She spent time interacting with young people. She went to conferences and was abroad because she was on international committees. She recalls that she was looking for good Indian students at these places and would invite them to give talks. She said she recruited Bhat that way. She adds that CAOS had a lab and observation arm, rare in centres. She was also scouting two students from Princeton, but they didn’t come. Ravi Nanjundiah joined because they needed a modeller. They also required faculty to teach courses. She recalls that she had to teach two lessons before and that it used to be complicated.
(01:46:03) On her family
Her daughter is a journalist, and a badminton champion currently competing in the Asian championship. Her daughter has two daughters of her own. The second daughter is in Rishi Valley School. Her son is a mathematician, and his wife is an economist who works on climate change. Her son-in-law is a mechanical engineer who makes trackers for solar energy. She says she is blessed. Madhav Gadgil has written his scientific autobiography (at the time of recording). She says she is still working on “figuring out what makes the monsoon tick.”
Date(s)
2022-02-24
Collection
Oral History: History of Science
Series
Sulochana Gadgil
Subseries
Sulochana Gadgil - Session 01