Tribute to my Si Prof. Dr. Sadhan Kumar Dutta (SKD)

When he used to teach we used to gossip in the class. One of the cause probably was that we could not hear him properly, especially at the end of the sentences. Certainly we couldn't fathom the knowledge of this scholar. He was a real Doctor of Philosophy (PhD). His knowledge attained such a level where all subjects became equal. 

I can recall few of his teaching that I often use during teaching my students, and I never forget to mention his name to my students, although I know that the students will pay little attention to it. Actually I probably become proud to have him as one of my teacher. That is the reason I get a kind of satisfaction while mentioning his name.

In one of his class on Thermodynamics he surpassed the boundary of subjects. He explained the concept of Entropy with two examples which I still remember.

(i) In our B.Pharm. second year Srilanka got a sole gold medal in Olympics in the sprint event while India was blessed with no medal. Indians were depressed as expected, but SKD Sir was not. He had his own explanation within Entropy. He explained that Srilanka is a small nation with small population, therefore had lesser entropy compared to India. A major portion of the Enthalpy of Srilanka had been channelized into success, in term of thermodymanics "work".

(ii) The second example was more cute. He compared the talent and contribution of Rabindra Nath Tagore and Kazi Nazrul Islam. As per SKD Sir Kazi Nazrul was more talented than Rabindranath, but the Entropy of the former was higher compared to that of the latter. As the symptom of Entropy, SKD Sir observed that Kazi Nazrul was a prolific poet with stupendous number of poems strewn everywhere, but he was too careless to archive those gems. Therefore, in SKD Sir's view Kazi Nazrul's entropy was very high. SKD Sir, then compared the work culture of Rabindranath by saying that he was also talented writer but at the same time he was very disciplined and hence his entropy was lower compared to Kazi Nazrul. Rabindranath used to archive all his works very diligently. This was the reason Rabindranath achieved more success and recognized worldwide compared to Kazi Nazrul. Therefore, we can reduce the Entropy of a system if we can discipline it.

His another prophecy I can recall was  "It is difficult to understand Thermodynamics before 40 years of age".

Thank you Sir.🙏