Satish Dhawan, the 3rd chairman of ISRO after whom the Sriharikota space center is named, and the man who shaped the organization and it's process to what it is today.
Thread on his Jayanti today.

While Vikram Sarabhai, is well known as the founder of ISRO, it was Satish Dhawan who actually built on that foundation, put down the processes and structure that would define it and was a major reason for it's success.
The father of experimental fluid dynamics research in India, one of the eminent researchers in the field of turbulence, was born on September 25, 1920 in Srinagar, and graduated from Lahore University with a rather unusual combination-BA (Maths), BE(Mech) and ME( Engg Litt).
When India became independent in 1947, Satish Dhawan, let for US to do his higher studies where he graduated in MS(Aerospace Engineering) from University of Minnesota and a Masters in Aeronautical Engineering from Cal-Tech and a double PhD in maths and aerospace engineering.
It was during his time, that the department emerged as center of experimental fluid dynamic research in India. In fact it was a pilot project conducted by him that resulted in setting up the world class wind tunnels for aerodynamic testing at the National Aerospace Lab( NAL).
In 1962, he became the youngest ever director of IISc, and would also be it’s longest serving one too and one of it’s most distinguished. After 9 long years, he went on to a sabatical to his alma mater, Cal Tech, and it was around this time, that Vikram Sarabhai passed away.
It was then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi who requested him to take charge of ISRO, which was still in it’s infancy then. Sarabhai had earlier been in touch with Dhawan, for advice in setting up a rocket motor facility in India.
Dhawan agreed to take over ISRO, on two conditions, one that it’s HQ would be at Bangalore, and another that he be allowed to continue with IISc( his first love as he called it). Indira Gandhi agreed to both, and he soon took charge after his sabatical at Cal Tech was over.
ISRO was formally born on May 1972, when the space program was placed under a separate Dept of Space, till then it was under Dept of Atomic Energy. Dhawan took over as both Chairman of ISRO, and Secretary of Dept of Space, beginning a long and succesful stint.
Basically India’s space program is handled by 3 institutions, Dept of Space responsible for the ideas, Space Comission that handles the nitty gritties of funding, logistics and ISRO responsible for the actual delivery. It was Dhawan who worked out the integration here.
More than anything, he introduced a professional management structure at ISRO. Dhawan set up small teams of experts presided over by a Project Director, which encouraged innovation, and then the efforts of alll these teams were coordinated towards a common goal.
He bought in specialists from outside, and by giving the Project Director a free hand, Dhawan ensured red tapism, the bane of many Indian PSUs, was drastically curtailed. He also encouraged indigenous suppliers to ISRO, most of the firms manufacturing the equipment are Indian.
And he also handpicked the best talent available for the space program. APJ Abdul Kalam was asked to lead the SLV-3 project, Roddam Narasimha to head the research at NAL and UR Rao in charge of the Aryabhatta mission.
It was not just in picking the talent, it was the way he handled it too. He encouraged youngsters, and if the project was a success, he gave them full credit, while in case of a failure, he took the responsbility on himself. It was one of the finest examples of leadership.
When the first experimental launch of SLV-3 on August 10,1979 ended up in failure, Dhawan stepped in to handle the fallout. And he did it an professional manner, backing his team mates, taking the responsibility.
When the first experimental launch of SLV-3 on August 10,1979 ended up in failure, Dhawan stepped in to handle the fallout. And he did it an professional manner, backing his team mates, taking the responsibility.
When the first experimental launch of SLV-3 on August 10,1979 ended up in failure, Dhawan stepped in to handle the fallout. And he did it an professional manner, backing his team mates, taking the responsibility.
Professor Dhawan’s management philosophy was that when success comes in after hard work, the leader should give the credit of the success to the team members. When failure comes, the leader should absorb the failures and protect the team members- APJ Abdul Kalam
If ISRO, is one of the success stories we can be genuinely proud of, credit goes to Satish Dhawan, who put in a professional management structure in place, picked the best of talent, gave complete backing and independence to the teams, pioneered innovation.
India’s first satellite Aryabhatta, development of communication satellites like INSAT and remote sensing systems like IRS are all due to Satish Dhawan’s efforts. He made Vikram Sarabhai’s dream of effectively utilizing space technology towards India’s needs come true.
Even after retirement Satish Dhawan, took a keen interest in policy matters related to science and technology. He was against militarization of space. The space center at Sriharikota has been named after him, a fitting tribute to a man who literally built ISRO.
He passed away on January 3, 2002, India lost one of it’s finest scientists. And yet his legacy lives on in the space center at Sriharikota. And everytime you hear of an ISRO success story, we shall always remember the man who made it possible. #SatishDhawan
Today as we celebrate #SatishDhawan Jayanti, take time to pay a tribute to the sterling contribution of the man who made ISRO to what it is today. A great scientist, leader and a gem of a human being. #Naman #SatishDhawanCentenary
My article on Satish Dhawan do check out and share.
https://t.co/bSO4CsSArf
My podcast on Satish Dhawan do check out and share.
https://t.co/0zmQEfEjOL
https://t.co/IXim0vJl0t

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#ஆதித்தியஹ்ருதயம் ஸ்தோத்திரம்
இது சூரிய குலத்தில் உதித்த இராமபிரானுக்கு தமிழ் முனிவர் அகத்தியர் உபதேசித்ததாக வால்மீகி இராமாயணத்தில் வருகிறது. ஆதித்ய ஹ்ருதயத்தைத் தினமும் ஓதினால் பெரும் பயன் பெறலாம் என மகான்களும் ஞானிகளும் காலம் காலமாகக் கூறி வருகின்றனர். ராம-ராவண யுத்தத்தை


தேவர்களுடன் சேர்ந்து பார்க்க வந்திருந்த அகத்தியர், அப்போது போரினால் களைத்து, கவலையுடன் காணப்பட்ட ராமபிரானை அணுகி, மனிதர்களிலேயே சிறந்தவனான ராமா போரில் எந்த மந்திரத்தைப் பாராயணம் செய்தால் எல்லா பகைவர்களையும் வெல்ல முடியுமோ அந்த ரகசிய மந்திரத்தை, வேதத்தில் சொல்லப்பட்டுள்ளதை உனக்கு

நான் உபதேசிக்கிறேன், கேள் என்று கூறி உபதேசித்தார். முதல் இரு சுலோகங்கள் சூழ்நிலையை விவரிக்கின்றன. மூன்றாவது சுலோகம் அகத்தியர் இராமபிரானை விளித்துக் கூறுவதாக அமைந்திருக்கிறது. நான்காவது சுலோகம் முதல் முப்பதாம் சுலோகம் வரை ஆதித்ய ஹ்ருதயம் என்னும் நூல். முப்பத்தி ஒன்றாம் சுலோகம்

இந்தத் துதியால் மகிழ்ந்த சூரியன் இராமனை வாழ்த்துவதைக் கூறுவதாக அமைந்திருக்கிறது.
ஐந்தாவது ஸ்லோகம்:
ஸர்வ மங்கள் மாங்கல்யம் ஸர்வ பாப ப்ரநாசனம்
சிந்தா சோக ப்ரசமனம் ஆயுர் வர்த்தனம் உத்தமம்
பொருள்: இந்த அதித்ய ஹ்ருதயம் என்ற துதி மங்களங்களில் சிறந்தது, பாவங்களையும் கவலைகளையும்


குழப்பங்களையும் நீக்குவது, வாழ்நாளை நீட்டிப்பது, மிகவும் சிறந்தது. இதயத்தில் வசிக்கும் பகவானுடைய அனுக்ரகத்தை அளிப்பதாகும்.
முழு ஸ்லோக லிங்க் பொருளுடன் இங்கே உள்ளது
https://t.co/Q3qm1TfPmk
சூரியன் உலக இயக்கத்திற்கு மிக முக்கியமானவர். சூரிய சக்தியால்தான் ஜீவராசிகள், பயிர்கள்
How can we use language supervision to learn better visual representations for robotics?

Introducing Voltron: Language-Driven Representation Learning for Robotics!

Paper: https://t.co/gIsRPtSjKz
Models: https://t.co/NOB3cpATYG
Evaluation: https://t.co/aOzQu95J8z

🧵👇(1 / 12)


Videos of humans performing everyday tasks (Something-Something-v2, Ego4D) offer a rich and diverse resource for learning representations for robotic manipulation.

Yet, an underused part of these datasets are the rich, natural language annotations accompanying each video. (2/12)

The Voltron framework offers a simple way to use language supervision to shape representation learning, building off of prior work in representations for robotics like MVP (
https://t.co/Pb0mk9hb4i) and R3M (https://t.co/o2Fkc3fP0e).

The secret is *balance* (3/12)

Starting with a masked autoencoder over frames from these video clips, make a choice:

1) Condition on language and improve our ability to reconstruct the scene.

2) Generate language given the visual representation and improve our ability to describe what's happening. (4/12)

By trading off *conditioning* and *generation* we show that we can learn 1) better representations than prior methods, and 2) explicitly shape the balance of low and high-level features captured.

Why is the ability to shape this balance important? (5/12)

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I just finished Eric Adler's The Battle of the Classics, and wanted to say something about Joel Christiansen's review linked below. I am not sure what motivates the review (I speculate a bit below), but it gives a very misleading impression of the book. 1/x


The meat of the criticism is that the history Adler gives is insufficiently critical. Adler describes a few figures who had a great influence on how the modern US university was formed. It's certainly critical: it focuses on the social Darwinism of these figures. 2/x

Other insinuations and suggestions in the review seem wildly off the mark, distorted, or inappropriate-- for example, that the book is clickbaity (it is scholarly) or conservative (hardly) or connected to the events at the Capitol (give me a break). 3/x

The core question: in what sense is classics inherently racist? Classics is old. On Adler's account, it begins in ancient Rome and is revived in the Renaissance. Slavery (Christiansen's primary concern) is also very old. Let's say classics is an education for slaveowners. 4/x

It's worth remembering that literacy itself is elite throughout most of this history. Literacy is, then, also the education of slaveowners. We can honor oral and musical traditions without denying that literacy is, generally, good. 5/x