By Eric Cornell

I was sorry to hear of the untimely passing of the distinguished Professor P. V. Panat. My closest connection with Professor Panat came at the CMT Workshop on Bose-Einstein Condensation in Pune in 1996, an extremely timely workshop which was in fact organized by Prof. Panat. I have the fondest memories of the workshop both scientifically and culturally, and still remember my conversations there with him, particularly on the topic of the best strategies for promoting and advancing Indian science. I was flattered when, some years later, Prof. Panat chose an image from my lab to be the cover art for his textbook on statistical mechanics.

Professor Eric Cornell, who won the 2001 Nobel prize jointly with Profs. Wolfgang Ketterle and Carl E. Wieman
"for the achievement of Bose-Einstein condensation in dilute gases of alkali atoms,
and for early fundamental studies of the properties of the condensates",
was an invited speaker for a workshop arranged by Prof. Panat in Pune in December 1996,
just a few months after the BE condensate was obtained for the first time.

February 18, 2009