RESEARCH

Any Tom, Dick, Harry or Philip Kotler can be a marketing guru ________________ Surajit Dasgupta ________________ I f there are three natural numbers ‘a’, ‘b’ and ‘c’ such that a^2 + b^2 = c^2, you call them a Pythagorean triplet (e.g., 5, 12 and 13 make such a triplet as 5^2 + 12^2 = 13^2. And if you substitute 2 by any number, say, ‘n’, then you see that you are unable to find any set of three numbers, ‘a’, ‘b’ and ‘c’ satisfying the equation a^n + b^n = c^n for n ≠ 2. This is known as Fermat’s Last Theorem, which no one could prove mathematically for more than three centuries after the French mathematician’s death until Andrew Wiles of Princeton University, UK, proved it in the last decade. If Pythagoras of Samos and Pierre de Fermat had not formulated the above theorems, respectively, could Surajit Dasgupta have formulated them? Honestly, I do not suffer from such a grand delusion about my intellect. Now, sample this: As we, human beings, grow by age, we want our professional, socia

A student wants to write a thesis on an untouched subject. He approaches a 'guide', a professor in the know of previously researched topics and also the person who can fetch the student his research degree. The latter exploits the former to the extent of extracting personal, menial jobs from the poor student. If the young chap obliges — which most of PhD aspirants do — he gets a doctorate, irrespective of his knowledge in the subject concerned. If not, he is thrown out of the system. That's the story of research in India ______________ Sandeep Nagar ______________ O ne wonders how many people give a serious thought to the fact that India is a premier country to supply scientific human resources to developing countries and yet we are so backward when it comes to scientific research. We took 23 years (1984-2007) to make a Light Combat Aircraft ( LCA ) when aviation just completed its first century and that too by assembling foreign parts*. We always get second-hand accompli