Kendrapara: Internationally acclaimed Odia physicist Jnanadeva Maharana has started a padayatra to eradicate superstition, social evils and blind faith in society. He also wants to spread the message of non-violence and peace among the young.
Jnanadeva Maharana, 73, is the son of eminent freedom fighters Sharat Chandra Maharana and Annapurna Maharana and the grandson of Gopabandhu Choudhury and Ramadevi.
He started his padayatra from Ratnagiri in Jajpur district February 3 carrying a bag and a mug.
Maharana has been creating awareness among school and college students during his padayatra by visiting educational institutes. He urged students to show keen interest in science.
He has been advising students not to encourage social stigmas, evils, superstitions and blind faith as they are harmful. Gandhian philosophy, non-violence and peace are the need of the hour, he said. Students and youth should adopt non-violence, Maharana said.
“As the nation is celebrating the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, I started my journey February 3 from Ratnagiri, covering Ramchandrapur, Rajatota, Kalamatia and had a night halt at Indupur. On February 4, I started my padayatra from Indupur and reached Kendrapara. I visited the Tulashi Women’s College and the Baladevjew High School and interacted with students. I requested them to show interest in science to eliminate superstitions and social stigmas. I will walk to Cuttack and spread the message to schools and colleges on the way,” said Maharana.
“I have been getting a good response from students and the public. They assured me that they would follow my message. If a single student changes due to my words, then my mission will be successful,” he said.
Maharana won the prestigious Satyendranath Bose Medal. He was the first Odia to win this award instituted by the Indian National Science Academy in memory of scientist Satyendranath Bose.
A PhD holder from IIT-Kanpur, Maharana worked in organisations like the Indian Institute of Science, the Institute of Physics, Bhubaneswar and the National institute of Science Education & Research. He has also worked in reputed institutes in Japan, Germany, England, Switzerland and the US.
Maharana was also the coordinator of the Indo-French programme on Geometry. He was a visiting faculty at the California Institute of Technology and a Scientific Associate at CERN Geneva.
He was a Member of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, and Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences, Bengaluru. He was also a recipient of the Jawaharlal Nehru Fellowship.
Maharana was elected to Fellowship of the Indian National Science Academy in 1995. He also won the Samanta Chandrashekhar Award for Physical Sciences (1992) and the Biju Patnaik Award for Science (Returned in 2010).
His research in high energy physics, quantum field theory, string theory, gravitation, anti-symmetric tensor etc helped research scholars. So far, 124 research papers of Maharana have been published in international journals and he has been associated with the editing of three books on Physics.
He was Scientific Associate at the International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Trieste, Italy, from 1983 to 1989 and Senior Scientific Associate from 1991 to 1996.
PNN