My Science School

Michael Phelps is without doubt the best swimmer of all time and one of the greatest Olympians ever. He finished his Olympics career, which he started as a 15-year-old at the 2000 Sydney Games.

Phelps has 28 medals in total: his 23 gold medals are more than double the count of his nearest rivals, and its not as if other swimmers have accrued silly numbers of medals, either. Apart from Spitz, Matt Biondi (USA, eight golds) and Jenny Thompson (USA, eight golds), no other swimmer worldwide has managed more than six gold medals in total. 23 is astonishing.

 Having not picked up a single medal on his debut, he ran riot in the next four editions that he participated to finish with an all-time record haul at the Olympics, in addition to the innumerable medals that he has picked up in swimming championships worldwide.

Phelps towers over the rest of the individuals in the Olympics medal tally and he is often peerless when looking to compare with other athletes. So instead, if we were to consider Phelps as a country, where would he be on the all-time medals tally? With 23 golds - 13 of which were individual golds - three silver and two bronze, Phelps the one-man country will have less than one-fourth of the over 200 countries that participate at the Olympics above him. And this is through the history of the games - meaning Phelps currently has a medal haul that is better than over 150 countries, including India. Yet this ranking sells him short in some ways, because four of the countries ahead of him are Germany, which over time has competed as Germany, West Germany, East Germany and the Unified German Team. Russia, the Soviet Union and and the 1992 Unified Team (made up of the 15 former Soviet republics) account for three more countries ahead of Phelps. If measured against the 205 countries now in Rio, the Republic of Phelps has more gold medals than all but 32 of them.

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Chris Gayle, the Jamaican cricketer is a left-handed batsman and bowler. Born on 21st September 1979 in Kingston, Jamaica. This batting all-rounder was playing for the West Indies national cricket team for 20 years from 1999 to 2019. Chris Gayle is one of the finest IPL players ever, he is playing from the 2nd season of Indian Premier League edition. So far, Gayle has played for 3 different IPL teams. He was playing for Kolkata Knight Riders in IPL 2009 and 2010. From IPL 2011 to 2017, Gayle was playing for the Royal Challengers Bangalore IPL team, and after that he joined Kings Eleven Punjab. Chriss gayle hold so many records in ipl history :

Highest Individual score in IPL history

This is one record which will most likely not be broken anytime soon. Hitting 175 in a T20 match is outrageous and doing it in just 66 balls is even more extraordinary. The ground was the Chinnaswamy and the Unfortunate opponents were the Pune Warriors in 2013. He started with hitting huge Sixes of all bowlers and he showed no mercy to anyone that day. Virat Kohli and AB De Villiers were spectators in the show of the Universe Boss. He broke the record of Brendon McCullum who hit a smashing 158 in the very first match of the IPL. This was a once in a lifetime innings by a special cricketer and all the fans were privileged to have witnessed it.

Most sixes in an innings

Chris Gayle and sixes is like the greatest love story in cricket. And he has hit so many sixes that it is difficult to keep count. However, there was one day where he hit a century just by dealing in sixes as he smashed 17 sixes in an innings against Pune in 2013 where he hit 175 runs. Seeing his towering sixes was a delight for all the name not named Pune. And he did all this while smiling as if nothing was happening. He is a once in a lifetime cricketer, the likes of which we may never see again. That exhibition of six hitting that day will be remembered forever.

Most number of hundreds in IPL

This record is also held by the Universe Boss Chris Gayle. It shows how consistent he was in the tournament hitting 6 hundreds in such a difficult format to score hundreds. His first IPL hundred came against Kolkata Knight Riders at the Eden Gardens in 2011 where he single handedly won RCB the match. His next few hundreds came against Kings X1 Punjab and Delhi Daredevils where he smashed then to all parts. Then came that innings of 175 against Pune and after that again he scored against Punjab and finally for his 6th century he scored it for Punjab against Sunrisers Hyderabad and won them the match.

Only player to win back to back Orange caps

Winning one Orange cap is considered to be the best batting feat in the IPL, winning 2 with years in between is also amazing but to win it back to back is only the stuff that the Universe Boss can do. In 2011, when he joined the RCB team he hit 608 runs in just 12 matches and then the following year he bettered it by hitting 733 runs at a crazy average of 61.

Only batter to hit 350 IPL sixes

350 sixes is an insurmountable number for the other batters but for the Universe Boss Chris Gayle it is like any record for him. To understand the enormity of this record the second best is AB De Villiers with almost 100 sixes behind him. No one hits sixes with as much ease as Chris Gayle and probably never will.

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You might be aware that Abraham Lincoln served as the 16th president of the United States and also that he was assassinated in 1865. But did you know that the American statesman was also an accomplished wrestler? As a young man standing at six feet four inches tall, he participated in local wrestling competitions for over a decade and rarely lost any of the bouts. He was also said to be good at running, jumping and pitching the crowbar. He was recognised by the National Wrestling Hall of Fame, which inducted him as an "Outstanding American" in the sport in 1992.

During the seven years he lived in the small town of New Salem, Illinois, where he learned to be a lawyer, Lincoln took part in the local activity of wrestling. All of the men in town participated, so Lincoln felt he should too. No one thought a six foot four tall man could wrestle well, but he did. In seven years, he won 299 out of 300 recorded fought matches. Not too shabby for a lanky fellow.

He even became a hometown hero after defeating local bully Jack Armstrong. Ironically, Lincoln defended Armstrong in a court case in the next few years. Lincoln was seemingly a natural born leader. With his ability to command a room, give a powerful speech and negotiate, he is regarded as one of the best presidents in American history. As a leader, Lincoln was determined to hold together a nation that was falling apart at the seams.

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Helen Keller was the first deaf blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree, graduating from Radcliffe College, Massachusetts, in 1904. Her autobiography, The Story of My Life, written during her junior year at Radcliffe has been translated into 50 languages and remains in print to this day. She is remembered as an advocate for persons with disabilities, while her life story continues to be an inspiration to millions across the world.

Despite the fact Helen was virtually unable to communicate; her parents were determined to find a tutor for her because they believed she could learn. They finally met Anne Sullivan, and their hopes were fulfilled. Anne herself was partially blind, but she learned the manual alphabet while she was a student at the Institute.

Anne Sullivan taught Helen the manual alphabet by pressing the handshapes into Helen’s palm. Helen was soon able to read Braille and write with a special typewriter. Helen also eventually learned to speak by feeling Anne’s throat as she spoke and imitating the vibrations. Helen made history in 1904. She was the first deaf and blind person to graduate from college. She graduated from Radcliffe College with honors. Speaking about war, capital punishment, and child labor, Keller lectured all over the world for most of her life. As a champion for people with disabilities, she provided inspiration for those who might have otherwise lost hope.

Anne Sullivan was a constant companion to Helen until her death in 1936. At the age of eighty-eight, Helen died in 1968 in Westport, Connecticut.

Helen is truly an inspiration to all people–not just people with disabilities. She proves that anything can be accomplished through hard work, dedication, and faith.

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Did you know a beetle species in 2019 was named after Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg in recognition of her contribution towards creating awareness about climate change? Called Nelloptodes gretae the tiny beetle belongs to the Ptiliidae family of beetles. The beetle is less than 1 millimeter long. They have no eyes or wings and are a pale yellow and gold color. . Nelloptodes gretae belongs to a group of some of the smallest known free-living animals, London's Natural History Museum said Friday. 

The species is fitting for the Swedish 16-year-old. "Many people say that Sweden is just a small country and it doesn't matter what we do," Thunberg once said. "But I've learned that you are never too small to make a difference." Not to mention the beetle's antennae, which resemble Thunberg's signature pigtail braids.

Michael Darby, a scientific associate at the museum who found the insect during his studies of the museum's vast collection, chose the name to honor Thunberg's contribution to saving the planet.

Nelloptodes gretae was first discovered in Kenya in the 1960s by entomologist William Block, who donated the samples to the museum, where they have stayed ever since. Thunberg has become known worldwide for her weekly climate strikes, which she started on her own in 2018. Since then, the teenager has inspired millions of people to spend their Fridays urging their governments to take action against climate change.  Her movement has resulted in the largest climate protests in history. 

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American Elizabeth Magie invented the Landlord's Game (precursor of the modern Monopoly) in 1904, as a sign of protest against the barons and monopolists of the Gilded Age (a period in the U.S. marked by materialism and corruption). The purpose of the game was: to educate people about how the rich were unfairly profiting off the labour of the commoners.

A progressive woman

She was heavily influenced by the writings of Henry George, a political economist and land reformer. His progressive views on taxes and wealth inequality were imperative in laying the foundation of the Landlord's Game.

Magie curated two different versions of the game - an anti-monopolist version where wealth created was equally distributed among all the players, and a monopolist version where everyone tried to get as rich as possible while bankrupting others. This duality was her attempt at demonstrating how the first variation is morally superior.

Magie's game patented

 Patented in 1904, the game was a hit among the masses, especially among the Quakers (a group of people who embraced equality and peace, and rejected war) of the Atlantic. But to her dismay, the game designed to educate people about the evils of monopoly ended up doing quite the opposite.

As its popularity gained momentum, people started customising and modifying the rules of the game while drawing the design by hand on fabric or table cloth. One of those people was Charles Darrow. His version had a circular board, and more cut-throat rules. He also added small illustrations of actual streets of the Atlantic city (with their names) and colour-coordinated them - to create the board we know today.

Her game is sidelined

In 1935, Parker Brothers bought the rights to Darrow's version of the Monopoly and added a portly mascot with a top hat and a cane (rumoured to be modelled around American banker JP Morgan). They also distributed metal tokens with each set inspired by trinkets Darrow had used from his niece's charm bracelet. While this deal made Darrow a millionaire, Magie's patent was bought by the brothers for mere $500.

The truth emerges

In 1948, with the death of Elizabeth Magie, the very truth of the origin of Monopoly had nearly died with her, as officially the company still credited Darrow as the inventor of the game. Things changed in 1973, when the Parker Brothers engaged in a legal battle with a professor named Ralph Anspach over the creation of his anti-monopoly game, and accidentally uncovered Magie's patents.

Even now, with more than a century under its belt, Monopoly is considered the best-selling board game in modern history, and has been translated into 47 languages.

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Meghnad Saha was an Indian astrophysicist, who proposed the Saha ionization equation by relating the temperature of stars to their spectrum. The equation seeded the foundation for many advancements in astrophysics and astrochemistry.Meghnad Saha was born near Dhaka, in the former Bengal Presidency of British India in 1893. Coming from a humble background, he worked very hard to attend school and colleges. He did odd jobs to support his stay and education. Saha joined the Presidency college. where he was taught by renowned scientists, including Prafulla Chandra Ray and Jagadish Chandra Bose. He did MSc in Applied

Mathematics in 1915 from Calcutta University. The next year, he became a lecturer in the Calcutta University College of Science.

In 1919, Saha received the Premchand Roychand Scholarship for his dissertation on the Harvard Classification of Stellar Spectra. He carried out his research in Europe. In 1920, Saha successfully formulated the thermal ionisation theory and the Saha ionization equation. His thesis on "Origin of Lines in Stellar Spectra' won him the Griffith Prize of the Calcutta Universit Saha equation links the composition and appearance of the star spectrum with the temperature of the light source and can thus be used to determine either the temperature of the star or the relative abundance of the chemical elements investigated. The thermal ionization equation was later perfected by the British astrophysicist Edward A. Milne. The equation has remained fundamental in all work on stellar atmospheres.

Saha joined the University of Allahabad in 1923 and worked there for the next 15 years. At the university, Saha wrote his famous book 'A Treatise on Heat. In 1939, he became a professor and Dean of the Faculty of Science at the University of Calcutta and remained there until his death in 1956.

Saha invented an instrument to measure the weight and pressure of solar rays and started the journal 'Science and Culture. He also worked on other topics like stellar spectra, thermal ionization, selective radiation pressure, spectroscopy, molecular dissociation, propagation of radio waves in the ionosphere, solar corona, solar radio emission, beta radioactivity, and the age of the rocks.

He won in the 1952 general election as an independent candidate from North-West Calcutta constituency. It was due to Saha's effort as an MP that the Saka Calendar or the Indian national calendar was adopted in 1956. He is also credited for drawing up the original plan of the Damodar Valley Project.

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What is William Wordsworth known for?

William Wordsworth was one of the founders of English Romanticism. He is remembered as a poet who always emphasised on the importance of Nature to a person's intellectual and spiritual development. He was a fierce advocate of using the vocabulary and speech patterns of common people in poetry. The son of John and Ann Cookson Wordsworth, William was born on April 7, 1770, in Cockermouth, Cumberland, located in the Lake District of England.

Wordsworth began writing poetry as a young boy in a grammar school. Before graduating from St. John's College, he went on a walking tour of Europe, which deepened his love for Nature and his sympathy for the common man. He is best known for Lyrical Ballads, which he co-wrote with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and The Prelude, a Romantic epic poem that chronicles the 'growth of a poet's mind.

It was with the publication of Lyrical Ballads in 1798 to great acclaim that the Romantic Movement in poetry was born.

Romanticism

This European intellectual movement gained traction across art, music and literature in the 18th Century.

Romanticism is best understood as a reaction to the birth of the modern world and its key features such as industrialisation, secularisation, and consumerism. It simply refers to the birth of a new set of ideas.

This era was thematically characterised by individualism and spirituality, an enhanced appreciation of the beauty of Nature and an exaltation of emotion over reason.

Literature from this time was preoccupied with the idea of conflict between oneself and society.

Wordsworth: A Nature poet

In the "Preface" to the second edition of Lyrical Ballads published in 1800, Wordsworth described poetry as "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings," which became the manifesto of the English Romantic movement.

His poetry returns to the simplistic image of Nature as the base. Throughout his works, he laid emphasis on the noble impact of the natural world on mankind. From the highest mountain to the simplest flower according to him, the natural world inspired passionate emotions in those who observe them.

To him Nature was a source of joy and solace. The same is exemplified by the following lines from his poem Daffodils:

"For oft, when on my couch I lie

 In vacant or in pensive mood,

 They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

 And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils."

Celebrations in place

7th April 2020 marked the 250th birth anniversary of Wordsworth. This significant occasion is being commemorated nationwide and internationally with celebrations of the poet's life, work, and legacy.

The project, Wordsworth 250, got delayed because of the COVID-19 pandemic. His descendants have come up with a range of celebrations to mark the poet's birth anniversary in the Lake District.

With the aim to build a living archive of the poet's writing, the public was asked to send in recorded recitations of their favourite Wordsworth poems.

What initially started as a family memorial turned into a global celebration of the poet's legacy as a host of actors and celebrities joined forces and participated in the celebration.

A record of youth

An undergraduate at St John's College, Cambridge from 1787 to 1791, Wordsworth is arguably the College's most famous alumnus. An exhibition was held to honour his memory at his alma mater. It showcased items from the Library's Wordsworth Collection, which included portraits and artefacts as well as his signed manuscripts and printed books. Here one could view the poet's face (as cast from life by artist Benjamin Robert Haydon) and his breakfast tea cup which was a gift from his art patron Sir George Beaumont, alongside letters to his eminent contemporaries and first-edition copies of his greatest works.

Cumbria Festival Chorus

Cumbria Festival Chorus and Orchestracelebrated the occasion with a concert featuring two new choral commissions by local composers, both based on Wordsworth's poetry: "Child of the Clouds" by Roland Fudge, based on The River Duddon Sonnets, and "Influence of Natural Objects" by Jonathan Millican, based on the poem by the same name. The programme was complemented by the British composer Gerald Finzi's performance of the poet's Intimations of Immortality.

Is he still relevant?

Wordsworth's genius was his reaction to the changing time and the developing modernity. His work highlighted the loss of innocence that accompanied the Industrial and technological revolutions. His words lament the disrupted bond between Nature and mankind, emphasising the need to look inward. His accessible poetry challenged the traditional poetic diction by grounding itself in the rustic life of the countryside.

Literary critics praise his analysis of the cultural practices of the time and credit him with laying the foundation for media theory and the modern cultural discourse.

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American mechanic Walter Hunt is regarded as the inventor of the modern safety pin. Mechanic and independent inventor Walter Hunt secured a place in American history when he invented the useful, everyday device known as the safety pin in 1849. Born on July 29, 1796, Hunt lived and worked in New York, where he invented a variety of tools and household items and made improvements to existing machinery.

Needing to settle a $15 debt with a friend, Hunt decided to invent something new in order to pay it off. He took an 8" piece of brass wire and made a coil in the centre so it would open up when released. A clasp at one end shielded the sharp edge from the user. After being issued the patent on 10 April 1849, he sold it to W. R. Grace and Company for $400. He then paid the $15 to the friend and kept the remaining amount. In the years to follow, the company would make millions of dollars in profits from his invention.

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Florence Nightingale (12 May 1820 - 13 August 1910) an English social reformer considered the founder of modern nursing. While serving as a nurse during the Crimean War, where she tended to wounded soldiers, she was dubbed The Lady with the Lamp' after her habit of making rounds at night. Her birth anniversary is celebrated as International Nurses Day.

Nightingale improved the health of households through her most famous publication, Notes on Nursing: What It Is and What It Is Not, which provided direction on how to manage the sick. This volume has been in continuous publication worldwide since 1859. Additional reforms were financed through the Nightingale Fund, and a school for the education of midwives was established at King’s College Hospital in 1862. Believing that the most important location for the care of the sick was in the home, she established training for district nursing, which was aimed at improving the health of the poor and vulnerable. A second Royal Commission examined the health of India, resulting in major environmental reform, again based on Nightingale’s statistical data.

Florence Nightingale was honoured in her lifetime by receiving the title of Lady of Grace of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem and by becoming the first woman to receive the Order of Merit. On her death in 1910, at Nightingale’s prior request, her family declined the offer of a state funeral and burial in Westminster Abbey. Instead, she was honoured with a memorial service at St. Paul’s Cathedral, London. Her burial is in the family plot in St. Margaret’s Church, East Wellow, Hampshire.

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After years of dreaming about it and seven weeks of climbing, New Zealander Edmund Hillary (1919–2008) and Nepalese Tenzing Norgay  (1914–1986) reached the top o fMount Everest, the highest mountain in the world, at 11:30 a.m. on May 29, 1953. They were the first people to ever reach the summit of Mount Everest. Mount Everest had long been considered unclimbable by some and the ultimate climbing challenge by others. Soaring in height to 29,035 feet (8,850 m), the famous mountain is located in the Himalayas, along the border of Nepal and Tibet, China.

Before Hillary and Tenzing successfully reached the summit, two other expeditions got close. Most famous of these was the 1924 climb of George Leigh Mallory (1886–1924) and Andrew "Sandy" Irvine (1902–1924). They climbed Mount Everest at a time when the aid of compressed air was still new and controversial.

Among the eleven chosen climbers, Edmund Hillary was selected as a climber from New Zealand and Tenzing Norgay, though born a Sherpa, was recruited from his home in India.

Both Hillary and Hunt were knighted in July (Hunt was later made a life peer), and Tenzing was awarded the George Medal. All members of the expedition were feted at parties and banquets for months, but the spotlight fell mostly on Hillary and Tenzing as the men responsible for one of the defining events of the 20th century.

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René Descartes (1596–1650) was a creative mathematician of the first order, an important scientific thinker, and an original metaphysician. During the course of his life, he was a mathematician first, a natural scientist or “natural philosopher” second, and a metaphysician third. In mathematics, he developed the techniques that made possible algebraic (or “analytic”) geometry. In natural philosophy, he can be credited with several specific achievements: co-framer of the sine law of refraction, developer of an important empirical account of the rainbow, and proposer of a naturalistic account of the formation of the earth and planets (a precursor to the nebular hypothesis). More importantly, he offered a new vision of the natural world that continues to shape our thought today: a world of matter possessing a few fundamental properties and interacting according to a few universal laws. This natural world included an immaterial mind that, in human beings, was directly related to the brain; in this way, Descartes formulated the modern version of the mind–body problem. In metaphysics, he provided arguments for the existence of God, to show that the essence of matter is extension, and that the essence of mind is thought. Descartes claimed early on to possess a special method, which was variously exhibited in mathematics, natural philosophy, and metaphysics, and which, in the latter part of his life, included, or was supplemented by, a method of doubt. He has been seen, at various times, as a hero and as a villain; as a brilliant theorist who set new directions in thought, and as the harbinger of a cold, rationalistic, and calculative conception of human beings. Those new to the study of Descartes should engage his own works in some detail prior to developing a view of his legacy.

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Dr Robert Koch was a pivotal figure in the golden age of microbiology. It was the German bacteriologist who discovered the bacteria that causes anthrax, septicaemia, tuberculosis and cholera, and his methods enabled others to identify many more important pathogens. Thanks to his contributions to the field, he is sometimes known as the father of bacteriology, a title shared with Louis Pasteur.

Koch’s first important discovery was on anthrax, a disease that killed large numbers of livestock and some humans. Rod-shaped structures had been observed in the blood of infected animals, but the cause of the disease was still uncertain.

Koch found that the disease could be spread by the blood of infected animals, and hypothesised that it was caused by living bacteria. He developed sophisticated techniques for observing bacterial growth on microscope slides, and saw that anthrax could form spores that survived desiccation, but produced more bacteria when put back into a moist environment. This explained how contaminated soil could remain toxic for years.

Although others had earlier determined that germs cause disease – notably Pasteur and Joseph Lister – Koch was the first to link a specific bacterium, in this case bacillus anthracis, to a specific disease.

Koch learned that dyes helped to make bacteria visible and identifiable under the microscope, and published the first photographs of bacteria. He proudly announced to his parents he had taught himself to read at the age of five with the aid of the newspapers the adults read and then discarded. He even has a crater on the moon named after him. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1905 for his tuberculosis findings and is considered one of the founders of microbiology.

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Shakuntala Devi (1929-2013) was a mathematical wizard known as "the human computer" for her ability to make incredibly swift calculations. In 1977, at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, she extracted the 23rd root of a 201-digit number in 50 seconds, beating a computer which took 62 seconds. In 1980, she correctly multiplied two 13-digit numbers and recited the 26-digit solution in only 28 seconds at the Imperial College in London earning her a place in the 1982 edition of the Guinness Book of World Records. She further demonstrated her multiplication skills by multiplying two 13-digit numbers 7,686,369,774,870 x 2,465,099,745,779 picked at random by a computer at Imperial College in London. She correctly answered 18,947,668,177,995,426,462,773,730 in only 28 seconds, which earned her a place in the 1982 edition of the Guinness Book of World Records. Her mathematical gifts were first demonstrated as she was doing card tricks. A genius mathematician, Shakuntala Devi passed away at a hospital in Bangalore, India, April 21. She was 83.

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Sayed Haider was an Indian painter who lived and worked in France from 1950 until his death, while maintaining strong ties with India. Sayed Haider Raza was born in 1922 in the indian state of Madhya Pradesh. He started his career in the 1940s with expressionistic watercolours of his surroundings. In 1950, his life took an unexpected turn, when he won a French Government Scholarship and got the chance to study at the Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Here, he was exposed to different forms, coloration and composition techniques of the Post-Impressionists and discovered oil painting.

Thereafter, he continued to create landscapes inspired by the works of renowned artists like Cézanne, Gauguin and Van Gogh, and began to use colour as a tool of construction, switching from gouache and watercolour to more tactile oil-based pigments.

After his studies, he travelled across Europe, and continued to live and exhibit his work in Paris. He was later awarded the Prix de la critique in Paris in 1956, becoming the first non-French artist to receive the honour.

As one of the foremost pioneers of Indian modern art, his paintings blended Parisian modernism with the colours of Indian Rajput art. He is considered to be one of the most important 20th-century painters.

Inspiration and Subject Matter

The most tenacious memory of Raza's childhood was the fear and fascination of Indian forests. He lived near the source of the Narmada river in the centre of the dense forests of Madhya Pradesh. The nights in the forests were hallucinating; sometimes the only humanising influence was the dancing of the Gond tribes. Only the daybreak brought back a sentiment of security and wellbeing. On market day, under the radiant sun, the village was a fairyland of colours. Till his last days, he found these aspects of his life dominate his paintings thematically.

Rooted in his childhood memories over time his landscapes became increasingly abstract.

Progressive Art Movement

He was a co-founder of the Progressive Artists Group (PAG) which was established in 1947, in Bombay. It was a collective of some of the most awe-inspiring Indian artists who diverted from and challenged the conventional artistic sensibilities of the time to espouse a global mindset.

An attempt to break away from the revivalist nationalism endorsed by the Bengal School of Art, the PAG emerged out of the disdain and shock of the brutality that accompanied the partition of India. Its impetus was the creation of an Indian form of modernism that combined pluralism of Indian art history with modern European styles such as post-impressionism. expressionism and cubism.

Apart from Raza the founding members of PAG included F.N. Souza, M.F. Husain, K.H. Ara, S.K. Bakre, and H.A. Gade. Author Mulk Raj Anand praised them as the 'heralds of a new dawn in the world of Indian art.

Innovative Ideation

Raza explored the themes of Prakriti (nature), Kundalini (primal energy), Tribhuj (triangle) and Bindu (circle/dot) through his work.

His most celebrated series was Bindu. Conceptually derived from the Sanskrit word "Shunya", which has a spiritual connotation of being in a supreme state of awareness where everything comes to nothingness.

To him Bindu was the centre of all creation, a source of energy and life.

His best-known works are densely geometric, reminiscent of abstract pioneers like Wassily Kandinsky, inviting viewers into complex spatial and emotional interactions with his canvases.

In Passion: Life and Art of Raza, an autobiographical work he co-authored with Ashok Vajpeyi, the artist elucidates how the idea of Bindu which many would agree is the leit motif in his art was introduced to him by his school headmaster.

In the book he recalls, how worried about the wandering nature of his student, Nand Lal Jharia, the headmaster, summoned him and asked him to forget about everything and just concentrate on the dot he made on the board.

Raza returned to India in 2010 after living in France for six decades. France had an important influence on his painting style, but the object of his art remained closely related to India.

The archetypical Indian spirituality and tradition that Raza brought to his canvas by contrasting different colours spoke of the artist's sincere devotion towards his people and culture. His art was his voice, his vision and his legacy.

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