The high-energetic wisdom of Rohini Godbole

It is rare to find scientists who apply their critical minds in bringing reforms to the scientific community as they do in their disciplines. We lost one such individual recently in Indian science.

On October 25, the news of Rohini Godbole’s death left us with a deep sense of loss. For us, the editors of thelifeofscience.com, Rohini was a source of unparalleled inspiration and insight. Few have done as much as Rohini for women in science in India, and for that, she held a special place in our hearts and minds.

Tributes to her and her work continue to pour in as we hold her in our memory today on what would have been her 72nd birthday.

“I work in the area of high energy physics phenomenology; the subject of fundamental constituents of nature and how they are put together.” – Rohini introduced herself as such in her groundbreaking book Lilavati’s Daughters. We think that this is how she would have liked to be remembered: her love for science at the forefront. And yet, she gave the world so much more.

A physicist begins

She did for Indian high-energy physics as much as she did for Indian women in science.

Rohini went to school in Pune. Here, she already began insisting on changes. In her letter titled ‘Reforms that may be introduced in my school’ (accessed by Gita Chadha via the NCBS Archive), she protested the dominance of ‘Domestic Science‘ over ‘General Science’ in her school curriculum. “It is correct that girls should know Domestic science to make themselves good housewives. However, in my practical experience this was a great handicap for my high school scholarship examination,” the high-schooler wrote. “I don’t suggest that Domestic Science should not be taught, but I suggest General Science should also be taught to enable to compete better in high school scholarship and SSC examination.” 

Tracking her love for physics, she went on to win scholarship after scholarship, dodging a seductive high-salaried banking job along the way, and landed at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, to begin her research in particle physics in 1974. This was the same year when the November Revolution in particle physics took place, where a series of discoveries and changes supported by theory and experimentation brought on the acceptance of the Standard Model of Particle Physics as a fundamental theory of nature. 

The Standard Model links the building block of matter to the fundamental forces of nature and posits that the universe is composed of 17 subatomic particles. The complex interplay of such particles and forces was to become Rohini’s lifelong subject of interest.

Rohini grew as a physicist in the environs where the Standard Model was being established. In 2021, after the death of Steven Weinberg, the theorist credited with some of the central pieces of the Standard Model, Rohini co-wrote a homage to him describing how his mathematically beautiful and compelling theories related to ongoing experiments. The tribute attests to the fact that Weinberg’s work shaped the lives of several young particle physicists of the time. Rohini was one among them.

Rohini’s life in science went far and beyond the Standard Model though. Though the model explains a lot, it provides no clues for some open puzzles in physics today, like dark matter, which was one of Rohini’s academic interests. When one particle from the Standard model was found to be heavier than the model predicts, Rohini told The Telegraph: “In some sense, we were all hoping to find evidence for (a physics) beyond Standard Model physics at the Large Hadron Collider or otherwise.” The theoretical framework that was one of Rohini’s main interests is supersymmetry, which works with its own set of theorised particles. And Rohini literally wrote the textbook on it, with co-authors Manuel Drees and Probir Roy, which opened up the field to several of Rohini’s students and younger colleagues.

In her scientific work, her eye was set on the next generation of particle colliders like the debated electron-positron colliders. She wanted the Indian physics community to play a leading role in these big science global efforts. In this way, she did for Indian high-energy physics as much as she did for Indian women in science. She often made a case for the Indian physics community’s participation in the summoning of physics beyond the standard model employing both international projects as well as building India-based experiments.

The Drees-Godbole Effect

As usual in our field, we always used alphabetical ordering of authors. Everybody in the field knows this doesn’t mean I contributed more. In fact, we collaborated as equals – Manuel Drees, Rohini’s collaborator, on the Drees-Godbole Effect

Some of Rohini’s significant scientific partnerships have been with fellow theorist and friend Manuel Drees, who currently works at the University of Bonn, Germany. In an email exchange with me, Manuel spoke of their fulfilling collaboration and long friendship. They met first in 1986 in Dortmund, Germany where Manuel had just finished his PhD. 

“We did not start our collaboration then, but I remember that she treated me as an equal from the start; at the time this was an unusual experience for me. I was flattered that she treated me as an equal, even though she was considerably senior to me; eventually, this became natural between us,” Manuel recalled fondly.

Years later, they began describing their mathematical calculations to theorise the interactions of subatomic particles inside high-energy particle colliders. In a series of papers, they described an effect in strong interaction physics, which is often called the Drees-Godbole effect. “As usual in our field, we always used alphabetical ordering of authors. Everybody in the field knows this doesn’t mean I contributed more. In fact, we collaborated as equals,” Manuel clarified the ordering in the naming of the effect.

The Drees-Godbole effect can be simply understood as the significance of when the photon’s hidden potential to act like a hadron is unleashed. Manuel termed this as the hadronic “content” of the photon.

“Fundamentally, in the interaction between charged subatomic particles in an electromagnetic field, a photon can behave like a hadron,” Manuel begins to describe the effect. Hadrons are composite structures of subatomic particles similar to molecules in chemistry or biology, for example, a proton (which is found inside an atom’s nucleus and is made up of quarks) is a kind of a hadron. The photon, famously known as the carrier of light, is sizeless but is the force-carrier of interactions between sub-atomic particles. And it doesn’t “behave like a hadron” very often.

In their theoretical calculations, Rohini and Manuel observed that when this “hadronic content” of a photon has been accessed, it interacts with other hadrons very strongly.

“The upshot is that in interactions between photons and hadrons (as studied in particle colliders like the Large Hadron Collider), the contribution of the hadronic component of the photon is often comparable to, or even dominant over, the contribution of the photon’s usual interactions,” Manuel said.

In the early 1990s, in one of their papers, Rohini and Manuel showed that this “hadronic component of the photon” leads to a greatly enhanced probability of producing pions (the lightest of the hadrons) of relatively low energy at linear colliders that were then being discussed. “In fact, for some of the designs suggested for linear colliders, this would happen simultaneously with other reactions producing much more energetic particles. This background of low-energy pions would make the interpretation of the interesting part of the event more difficult,” he added. This happens at the Large Hadron Collider all the time and is a nuisance for the experimenters. 

Commenting on how the work relates to the future generation of colliders, Rohini told The Indian Express that the next generation of particle colliders “will have to take the photon interaction factor into account at the design stage itself so as to be able to perform accurate physics studies”. 

“We hope that our case studies and approximation schemes will be useful in further optimising the designs for linear colliders,” she had said.

‘Rohini can always be heard’

Someone said that you heard Rohini before you saw her and it was true! – Chayanika Shah

Those mourning her loss include her friends and colleagues at CERN, Geneva, Switzerland, which houses the Large Hadron Collider where the famous Higgs Boson was discovered in 2012. Rohini visited CERN often and contributed to several projects and discussions there. 

Archana Sharma, a physicist at CERN, closely worked with Rohini. In an email, Archana shared her sorrow on hearing of Rohini’s passing: “Rohini Godbole was a remarkable physicist and cherished friend to many. Her visits to CERN were marked not only by her profound expertise in theoretical physics but also by her vibrant spirit and genuine warmth.”

She continued, “Each time I interacted with her, I was always left with wonder for her wealth of knowledge and passion for unravelling the complexities of particle physics. During her visits to CERN, she contributed significantly to several key projects, helping shape our understanding of theoretical frameworks for particle physics. Her insights were instrumental in pushing the boundaries of our research, and her presence invigorated the scientific community.”

Several tributes to Rohini, including Archana’s, speak of her infectious enthusiasm emanating from a resounding voice, something that surprised many since she was relatively small in stature. “Someone said that you heard Rohini before you saw her and it was true!” wrote Chayanika Shah, an educator, researcher, and queer-rights activist, in a heartfelt tribute on social media recollecting the first time she met Rohini in Trieste.

“She was my senior from the same department in IIT Bombay and as is the case with that one geeky woman student in a class of many men, there were many stories that were told about how good she was in physics,” she continued. After the two physics lovers finally met, they became good friends.

“Our feminisms had some meeting points and at other times we were far away from each other. Similarly, our understanding and love for science also took different paths. I was the college teacher and she was the senior scientist. All day today, [I] have been thinking of her with fondness and sorrow. The other day in one of our meandering conversations on queer communities, we spoke of friendships, of feeling good that we know someone somewhere who is part of our lives and making a difference to the world, and how it made you richer to have them in however brief a spell it maybe. Rohini, you are that friend who made my life richer. Wish you had got more time,” Chayanika wrote.

Rohini’s friendships and partnerships have borne many scientific fruits. When Manuel moved to Madison, USA, for his first post-doctoral fellowship, he invited Rohini to attend a unique format of a science conference organised by senior researchers in particle physics. This was a meeting where attendees worked on open questions together, and not just presented work they’d already done before, as is the case in most science conferences. Manuel said that Rohini liked this format very much, and upon returning to India, she started a similar series of workshops called WHEPP (Workshop on High Energy Physics Phenomenology). This series continues to this day, with the latest one held in IIT Gandhinagar in January this year.

Between 1990 and 1997, Manuel visited India many times to attend the WHEPP. He recalled that people would comment on his very tall height. “This made a nice contrast with Rohini,” he said; it was at one of the WHEPP workshops that someone said: “Manuel can always be seen, and Rohini can always be heard”.

According to Manuel, “The second part of this statement captures her indomitable spirit: in many ways, she didn’t have it easy in science, but she made sure that her voice, her opinion, indeed was being heard!”

“Rohini was a very good physicist and a great person. I will miss her sorely,” Manuel shared solemnly.

Rohini and The Life of Science

For us budding steminists at thelifeofscience.com, listening to Rohini was always insightful. Her concern for the lack of diversity was genuine, and her comments carried a special weight that made everybody tuned in and listened. We learned something from her every time, and will miss her contributions dearly as we go forward without her on the difficult journey to demand that the science ecosystem be an equitable space for all.

She never failed to egg us on our task. When we shared with her the release of our children’s book 31 Fantastic Adventures in Science, Rohini sweetly responded: “Incidentally, I gifted your book to a young girl, and she asked me why her mother (also a scientist) is not there. So, you have [your] future work more than cut out. Congratulations on the fantastic job!”

The concrete ideas that Rohini has put forth to make science a gender-equitable space are too many to enlist. The below two results from two separate studies that she was part of exhibit her astute view of the gender gap.

An excerpt from “Women Scientists in India” (2018), a report by Ramakrishna Ramaswamy and Rohini Godbole:

– There is significant participation of women in  studying science as well as in teaching science in schools and undergraduate colleges.

– However this is not true of women doing science,  namely involved in pursuing scientific research  as a career.

– The percentage of women faculty and students  in science and engineering decreases with the  perceived high status of the Institution as well  as with increasing position of authority within  the hierarchy.

Excerpt from our book, Labhopping (Primary Source: Kurup, A., Maithreyi, R., Kantharaju, B., & Godbole, R. (2010). Trained scientific women power: How much are we losing and why?):

– 14 percent of women in research never married but only 2.5 percent of men in research never married.

– 86 percent men scientists compared to 74 percent women scientists reported having children.

– Higher percentage of Women in Research spent 40-60 hours per week at work; higher percentage of Men In Research reported spending less than 40 hours per week at work.

– More women responded that organisational factors like flexible timings, day care, transportation and accommodation influenced them to take up scientific positions they presently had. More men than women had left previous posts for better prospects.

In addition to these studies, Rohini’s book Lilavati’s Daughters, which collected for the first time the biographies and autobiographies of around a hundred Indian women in science, forced the Indian science community to pay attention to the cause of women in science. 

These stories were truly hidden, and we would have never heard them if it wasn’t for Rohini’s joint efforts to collect them. One scientist featured in the book and its version for a younger audience, A Girl’s Guide to A Life in Science, is Prajval Shastri, an astrophysicist. Remarking on the heroic effort of bringing out these essays, she has said that it was Rohini’s gentle nudges that pushed her over her writer’s block, helping her finish writing her contribution.

Arvind Gupta, the beloved educator/toymaker, was gifted the book in 2008 by the late Dr. Mangala Narlikar to inspire him as he took on the task of writing a book of his own on Indian scientists. He remembers being “amazed” by the book’s vision.

“[Lilavati’s Daughters] was the first book that told stories of Indian Women scientists – written by them. I loved it. The pieces were uneven – some long, some very brief. Each had a different style. This made the book more charming,” he said.

In an effort to keep Rohini’s legacy alive, Arvind has now taken up the task of translating the book into Hindi and Marathi.

According to Arvind: “It is important to translate Lilavati’s Daughters fully in all Indian languages for 2 reasons. 1. It will be a true and lasting tribute to the late Prof. Rohini Godbole. 2. It will make the role and contributions of women scientists in India more visible. I hope I can help make this project a success,” he said.

Each of us who have been touched by Rohini’s gentle yet resolute spirit, holds within us the desire to carry on Rohini’s empowered vision for the world. To commemorate a giant like Rohini, we will need to keep the efforts going for a long, long time.

Note: The featured image for this piece has been illustrated by Ayesha Punjabi.