When you were doing your PhD at the University of Maryland's Department of Aeronautical Engineering, I believe you had quite a few close Indian colleagues like Dr Ajay Kothari and others. What was that student experience like? Ajay tells me about the fun times you guys had, and Dr K N Parthasarathy spoke of how you very generously taught them to drive in your spanking new BMW?
I did, I taught several of them to drive. Those were fun days. My experience as a graduate student and background maybe was a little different. I had graduated from undergraduate school in 1971, from Johns Hopkins in physics, and then I worked for three years. So I built up a certain amount of money -- obviously enough to afford a BMW -- and also got a Masters’ degree by going to college part-time in the evenings. Then, I decided I wanted to get a PhD and I knew I had to do that full-time. So in 1974, I went back to graduate school, full-time, with a Masters’ behind me and with the experience of three years at work, and I was very focused on accomplishing my goals.
The University of Maryland is a very cosmopolitan school, and when I was there, we had students from Egypt, India, Pakistan, Germany, England, just in our department, as well as America. It was a very cosmopolitan place and I enjoyed that very much. There were several Indian students there and I got to know them and I was very impressed by the quality of the undergraduate education that they had -- that they brought to the school. I was also very impressed with just how nice people they were. And so I would invite them for dinner at my house or I would go out to eat with them at Indian restaurants or whatever, and learnt to enjoy the food.
India is a very diverse nation and not all of you like each other very much, and so, I once said to my friends, I think I like you all better than you like each other, which became a somewhat famous remark in our group, because they often couldn't get along but I could get along with all of them. And so other things came up; those who intended to remain here wanted to learn to drive and I said well, I’ll teach you to drive. So, I taught several of them to drive, things like that. It just happened during one's student years, and they were very good years for me.
Those friends of yours went on to start companies, head scientific departments and research facilities in top colleges and companies and so on?
You bet. One of them, Dr Parthasarathy, works at the Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, another, Dr Ram Diwaker, is a director of research at General Motors in Warren, Michigan, and Ajay Kothari has his own company, Astrox Corporation, an aerospace research and development company designing hypersonic aircraft, in Maryland. A couple of them have gone back to India. I mean, they all wound up getting PhDs. They were a superb group of people.
Do you have plans to visit India soon?
I am actually hoping to go for the Chandrayaan launch if it doesn't interfere with other stuff I have to do. But my intention is to go for the launch, depending on when it is.
Image: Dr Griffin, second from left, with his graduate student buddies Dr Ajay Kothari, left, Dr Ram Diwakar and Dr K N Parthasarathy at a reunion party at Dr Kothari's home.
Also read: Saluting a Star
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