An Indian American physicist Mani Bhaumik has donated $11 Million to University of California, Los Angeles to establish a center to research on the basic laws of nature. It is the largest donation in the history of the university.

UCLA Chancellor Gene Block, in a statement, said, “I thank Mani Bhaumik for his philanthropic leadership and for believing in UCLA.”

The UCLA has confirmed that the Mani L. Bhaumik Institute of Theoretical Physics will be established and students will address all the unanswered questions in Theoretical Physics.

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“We are tremendously grateful to Mani for his vision and generosity.t is through extraordinary gifts like this that the next big leaps will be made in science,” said Joseph Rudnick of the Physical Sciences Division.

The University of Calcutta alumni, Mani Bhaumik was born at a remote village in West Bengal and he learned under the renowned physicist Satyendranath Bose. He said that he slept on rags in the thatched-roof mud hut sharing with his parents and six siblings.

In UCLA statement he said, “My family didn’t always know where our next meal would come from .I didn’t owe a pair of shoes until was 16 and walked four miles to school and back in my bare feet.”

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He became the first students in 1958 to earn a doctorate in physics from Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur. He traveled to UCLA in 1959 on a fellowship of Sloan Foundation and the people of his village contributed the money for his airfare. He said he reached UCLA with $3 in my pocket.

He said, “I though I’d died and gone to heaven. Everyone was treated equally, not like back at home where the poor were treated like a dirt.”

Bhaumik has worked in Xerox Electro-Optical Systems as a laser scientist in 1961 and later served as the director of laser technology laboratory at Northrop’s Corporate Research Laboratory. He announced the conclusive demonstration of the World’s first efficient excimer laser. Excimer laser is a form of laser used for high precision machining and for cutting biological tissues cleanly without damaging surrounding tissues.

“It’s very difficult to raise funds for this area, because people don’t understand what theoretical physicists do. But physics holds the answers to the most fundamental questions of our very existence. Imagine what could be solved right here at UCLA,” he said.

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By Prajakt K.