Ennackal Chandy George Sudarshan, popularly known as ECG Sudarshan, was born in September 1931 and is widely known for his work in the field of theoretical physics. ECG Sudarshan was an Indian American theoretical physicist and a professor at the University of Texas.
ECG Sudarshan was born in Travancore, British India. He was raised in a Syrian Christian family but later converted to Hinduism after he got married to Lalita Rau in 1954. The couple has three sons - Alexander, Arvind (deceased) and Ashok. ECG Sudarshan and Lalita's marriage did not last long and the couple got divorced in 1990. ECG Sudarshan then married Bhamathi Gopalakrishnan in Texas, US.
ECG Sudarshan was a celebrated man and highly educated as well. He studied at CMS College Kottayam and later graduated with honors from the Madras Christian College. After completing his master's degree from the University of Madras in 1952, he went on to work at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) with Dr Homi Bhabha. ECG Sudarshan then moved on to work at the University of Rochester in New York where he also received his Ph.D. He then moved to Harvard University as a postdoctoral fellow.
ECG Sudarshan was nominated for a Nobel Prize 9 times but never won it. It so happened that ECG Sudarshan began working on quantum optics at the University of Rochester in 1960.
In 1962, Glauber rebuked the use of classical electromagnetic theory in explaining optical fields. This took ECG Sudarshan by surprise as he believed that the theory provided valid reasons.
"Glauber criticized Sudarshan’s representation, but his own was unable to generate any of the typical quantum optics phenomena, hence he introduces what he calls a P-representation, which was Sudarshan’s representation by another name", a physicist wrote. "This representation, which had at first been scorned by Glauber, later becomes known as the Glauber–Sudarshan representation."
ECG Sudarshan was passed over for the Physics Nobel Prize not once but several times. It led to a major controversy in 2005 when many physicists wrote to the Swedish Academy and protested that Sudarshan should also be awarded his share for the Sudarshan diagonal representation (also known as Glauber–Sudarshan representation) in quantum optics, for which Roy J Glauber won his share of the prize.
In 2007, ECG Sudarshan was quoted by the Hindustan Times as saying, "The 2005 Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded for my work, but I wasn't the one to get it. Each one of the discoveries that this Nobel was given for work based on my research."
On not being selected for the 1979 Nobel, ECG Sudarshan said, "Steven Weinberg, Sheldon Glashow, and Abdus Salam built on work I had done as a 26-year-old student. If you give a prize for a building, shouldn’t the fellow who built the first floor be given the prize before those who built the second floor?"
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