A Short History of the Physics Alumni Society
The unfolding of events that led to the beginning of the alumni association of kindred spirits is set forth here. Before the ‘sands of time’ obscure the actual elements and events, the most important details are recorded.
Dr. R. Balakrishnan (RBK) always used to feel that our past pupils were a great strength to further develop and strengthen the department. Dr. Samuel Asirvatham (SA) and Dr. N. Lakshminarayan (NLN) had often discussed organizing a meeting of Physics department alumni. One day, there came along four spirited youngsters – Mr. Parthiban, Mr. Purushothaman, Mr. Radhakrishnan and Mr. Vijay Reddy of the 1975-80 batch. They had come up with the idea of organizing an alumni meet. However, this idea did not take off immediately. The idea then started spreading like wildfire in the modern jungle called the Internet. We now had a tiger by its tail and couldn’t let go. It had to happen, and it did, in 2010!
‘The idea then started spreading like wildfire in the modern jungle called the Internet’
The then Head of the Department, Dr. S. Philomin Raj (SPR) allocated the responsibility of organizing the event to SA and NLN. Now came along the helper – Mr. Sam Paul Dhamodharan. He gave his entire all and single-handedly did the initial spadework.
We were lucky to have spontaneous contributions of effort and money from all the faculty, from the 1985-88 batch, and from Mr. Saravanan Kannan (1990-1995). This panned out to a sizeable amount and enabled the comfortable organisation of the event.
Many of our alumni were eager to come back to the department and to the college, for a day walking down memory lane. All of them wanted to ‘give back’ to their department. On the 18th of December 2010, four generations of Physics alumni met with much warmth and fellowship. And, on that day, along the lines of the Physics Society, the new association of Physics alumni was born and christened the Physics Alumni Society (PAS).