Page 28 - Khabar Magazine (February 2020)

Desi World

ECONOMICS, NOBEL PRIZE,

SANSKRIT, AND CHEMISTRY

How many married couples have won the Nobel (November-December
Prize? Six, including last year’s winners in econom- 2019), was influenced by
ics: Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo (Michael Kremer Pa¯nini, the great Sanskrit
.
was a co-winner). Among these six couples, it turns grammarian who lived
out, there was another economist—and he also wrote over two millennia before
extensively about tackling poverty in South Asia. That Mendeleev. In their article,
was Sweden’s Gunnar Myrdal, who, along with Fried- Abhik Ghosh and Paul Ki-
rich Hayek, received the economics Nobel in 1974 (Alva parsky argue that Pa¯nini’s
.
Myrdal, his wife, was a co-winner of the Nobel Peace “generative grammar,” in which the rules of language
Prize in 1982). Marie and Pierre Curie were, of course, were efficiently compressed into meaningful units
the most famous Nobel couple, winning the physics with the help of symbols and abbreviations, inspired
prize in 1903. Marie Curie won again in 1911 (for chem- Mendeleev. The use of Sanskrit numerals eka, dvi, and
istry), while her daughter and son-in-law won the tri (one, two, and three) as prefixes for still-undiscovered
chemistry Nobel in 1935. The other two couples won elements is a clear sign of the influence. “Pa¯nini’s order-
.
the physiology or medicine Nobel in 1947 and 2014. ing of the sounds by place of articulation and aperture
Speaking of chemistry, the first tabular display of parallels Mendeleev’s ordering of the elements by their
chemical elements, devised by Dmitri Mendeleev, is increasing atomic weight,” the authors note. While
150 years old. This periodic table’s classification, ac- Pa¯nini analyzed the roots of language, Mendeleev
.
cording to a fascinating cover story in American Scientist turned to nature for his “chemical grammar.”

IN MEMORIAM 2019: CONTINUED

In the December issue of Khabar, given our Sonny Mehta, the legendary
printer’s deadline, we couldn’t mention the pass- editor at Knopf, was 77 when he
ing of a few notables in 2019. Veteran actress died on December 30th. He was
Shaukat Kaifi (aka Azmi), actress Shabana Azmi’s also the chairman of the Knopf
mother, died at the age of 93. Others included Doubleday Publishing Group. Ajai
cartoonist Sudhir Dar, actress Gita Siddharth, Singh Mehta, to use his given
educationist Suresh Gundu Amonkar, and ac- Sonny Mehta name, was the son of one of inde-
tor Shriram Lagoo. Then there was Ram Dass, pendent India’s first diplomats.
who died in Hawaii at the age of 88. Born Richard After his distinguished publishing stint in the
Alpert, he was a clinical psychologist at Harvard in the U.K., where he published Salman Rushdie and Jackie
1960s before his life took an improbable turn. Swept Collins, among many others, Mehta came to New York
up in that era’s hippie culture (or counterculture), he and took over at Knopf in 1987. The authors he
switched paths after a trip to India, where he met his published included Nobel laureates—V.S. Naipaul, Toni
guru, Neem Karoli Baba, who named him Ram Dass. Be Morrison, Orhan Pamuk, Kazuo Ishiguro—and highly
Here Now, which sums up his approach to life, is the popular writers like Michael Crichton, E.L. James, and
title of his popular spiritual guide, a Hippie Bible that Steig Larsson. He won Lifetime Achievement Awards
remains in print. Dass was partially incapacitated by a for publishing in the U.S., Britain, and India. His widow,
stroke in 1997, but he continued to teach and write. Gita Mehta, is a notable writer of fiction and nonfiction.
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26 • FEBRUARY• 2020 KHABAR MAGAZINE