• Professor, Physics
• Director, McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences

Cowsik

• B.S. in Physics, chemistry and mathematics at Mysore University
• M.S. in Physics at Karnatak University
• Ph.D. in Physics at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bombay University

News Stories & Tip Sheets:

Showing 3 Stories.

O'Ceallaigh Medal winner Cowsik receives award for 'outstanding contributions to cosmic ray physics' Sept. 14, 2009 -- Cowsik Ramanath Cowsik, Ph.D., professor of physics and director of the McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, received the 2009 O'Ceallaigh Medal for his "outstanding contributions to cosmic ray physics." Cowsik, whose scientific contributions span over four decades, received the award during the opening ceremony of the 31st biennial International Cosmic Ray Conference, held in Lodz, Poland.

Bringing Mars to life Ray Arvidson to deliver inaugural Robert M. Walker Distinguished Lecture Oct. 20, 2008 -- Raymond E. Arvidson, Ph.D., the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor at Washington University, will deliver the inaugural Robert M. Walker Distinguished Lecture at 7 p.m. Oct. 30 in Room 100, Brown Hall, on the university's Danforth Campus. Arvidson, who has played key roles in NASA's missions to Mars, including the current Phoenix Mars Mission, will discuss "Mars: Environments, Habitability, and Life" during the free lecture that is open to the public.

'Brings well-deserved credit for a distinguished career ' Cowsik elected to National Academy of Sciences Sept. 2, 2004 -- Ramanath Cowsik, Ph.D., professor of physics in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, recently became the 25th member of the Washington University faculty to be elected to the National Academy of Sciences. He joined 71 other new members and 18 foreign associates from 13 countries in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.

Showing 3 Stories.

Positions held

• Distinguished Professor, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research,
• Director, Indian Institute of Astrophysics

Affiliations & Honors

• Fellow: Indian Academy of Sciences, Indian National Science Academy, National Academy of Sciences, Third World Academy of Sciences (Trieste)
• Vikram Sarabhai Award for the Space Sciences
• S. S. Bhatnagar Award for Physics
• NASA Public Service Group Achievement Award
• President's Medal - 2nd Highest Civilian Award in India [ Padma-Shree ]
• Sir C. V. Raman Memorial Lecture Award

Papers of the Century

His paper describing the role of neutrinos and other weakly interacting particles in cosmology as dark matter, thence deriving strict bounds on their masses, was chosen by the American Physical Society in its heritage collection of 1000 seminal papers.

Research Contributions

Cowsik's scientific contributions span over several decades and are in the fields of astronomy, astrophysics, cosmology and non-accelerator particle physics; these are recorded in his 175 research papers. He established the highest observatory in the world in Hanle, Ladakh, in the Himalayas at an altitude of 15,000 ft. for astronomy in the optical and infrared wavelength bands. He has contributed significantly to the understanding of highly energetic phenomena in astrophysics such as cosmic rays, pulsars, supernova remnants, gamma ray bursts, active-galactic nuclei and other such sources powered by accretion flows. He has studied both the diffuse non-thermal radiations that permeate all space and also the emission of such radiations from discrete astronomical sources. The 'leaky-box' and the 'nested-leaky box' models invented by him are extensively used to interpret the observations of cosmic rays.

He has studied the virial discrepancy in the dynamics of clusters of galaxies and proposed the idea of weakly interacting particles as constituting the 'dark matter' that is responsible for the formation and the gravitational binding of galaxies and clusters of galaxies. Assuming thermodynamic equilibrium in the early hot and condensed state of a big-bang Universe, he calculated precisely thenumber density of the relict neutrinos, and thence derived a strict upper bound on the masses of the neutrinos - the 'Cowsik-McClelland bound.' His work, especially in the area of cosmology, is interdisciplinary in character and connects laboratory physics with the large scale phenomena of the universe. Accordingly, he has set useful bounds on the radiative instability of neutrinos and on baryon number, non-conserving proton-decay and neutron-antineutron oscillations. He developed a new method of deriving the age of the universe from studies of the isotopic anomalies in pre-solar grains of aluminum oxide found in meteorites.

Non-accelerator particle physics refers to the study of fundamental particles and their interactions without using huge accelerators like FermiLab. Cowsik performed the first detailed calculations on the fluxes of neutrinos generated by cosmic-ray interactions in the atmosphere and discussed their observation in detectors placed deep underground -- a study that later led to the discovery of neutrino oscillations at Kamiokande in Japan. At Washington University, he and his colleagues measured the longest radioactive half-life ever of the double beta decay of Te-128, as 7.7 x 1024 years. This long lifetime, in conjunction with the shorter lifetime of Te-130, implies an upper bound of ~1 eV on the Majorana mass of the neutrino, and strict bounds on majoran couplings.

Current Research Activity

His current efforts are primarily directed towards building an extremely sensitive torsion balance to probe possible violations of the inverse square law of gravity at sub-millimeter scales that are predicted by 'string-motivated' theories. This is a follow up of his longstanding interest in constructing sensitive torsion balances and using them to study Einstein's equivalence principle and to search for new fundamental forces. He is also interested in several problems in high energy astrophysics, dark matter and cosmology.