Q&A: Bimla Buti on plasma physics and shrinking the gender gap

Bimla Buti’s mentors were her father, Bodh Raj, and Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar. In India when she was growing up, her father encouraged her to pursue her interest in math and science, and in the US, Chandrasekhar, her PhD adviser—who later was awarded the 1983 Nobel Prize in Physics—became a lifelong guide.

After she earned her PhD in 1962 at the University of Chicago, Buti’s academic career took her back and forth between India and the US. She also had a long association with the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) in Trieste, Italy, including nearly two decades as director of plasma physics there.

After Buti retired from research, in 2003, she started the Buti Foundation. “I wanted to give something back to society,” she says. The foundation promotes education, advancement of knowledge, and computer literacy and strives to help the public connect with science. “I am putting more and more effort into reducing the gender gap in STEM,” she says. “That is my big priority now.”

PT: Tell us about your early life.

BUTI: My family moved from Lahore, which is now in Pakistan, to Delhi in 1947, because of Partition. We had to move to India at that time. I was 13 or 14. The first thing my father wanted to do was get me and my two nieces admission to some school. The one that we could get into was the government-run school for children who had migrated from Pakistan. Unfortunately, that school had no science whatsoever. I started my science education when I went to the University of Delhi.

PT: Why did you go into physics?

BUTI: Right from childhood I was interested in mathematics. I was really good at mathematics. That is the reason I went into theoretical rather than experimental physics. After finishing my bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the University of Delhi, I received a fellowship from the government of India to go abroad for my PhD.

The Ministry of Education asked me to list three universities I would want to pursue studies at. I said the University of Chicago, the University of California at Berkeley, and Columbia. One fine morning I got a letter saying I had been admitted to the University of Chicago. The ministry arranged everything.

PT: Had you chosen your field of research yet?

BUTI: At that time, at the University of Delhi, particle physics was a favorite subject, so I went to Chicago intending to do research in particle physics. In the first two quarters I took two courses in quantum mechanics with Chandrasekhar. I was so impressed with his simplicity, his way of teaching, that I said to myself, I’m going to forget about particle physics. I’m going to work with him, provided he accepts me.

After I finished all the coursework for my qualifying exam, I went to Chandra—that’s what everybody called him—and said I would like to work with him. He explained that he was only at the University of Chicago campus on Thursdays and Fridays—he was staying at Yerkes Observatory, about 90 miles north of the main campus. If I worked with him, I wouldn’t get much time with him, he said. I accepted the challenge. He gave me references for two papers and told me to come back the next week.

The next week he asked what I had found in the papers. I told him that I’d found some deficiencies in one of the papers, and I explained them to him. “Okay,” he said, “then you go ahead and take care of those deficiencies.”

In those days, Chandra was working on magnetohydrodynamics, which is related to plasma physics. So that’s how I got into plasma physics. Fixing the deficiencies in that paper became part of my PhD thesis.

PT: What was it like working with Chandrasekhar?

BUTI: I enjoyed it immensely. I received absolutely superb training from him. After that training, I was not scared at all to face any audience when I had to give a lecture—I had picked up that much confidence.

Many people, including his students, used to feel that Chandra was a very dry, not very social person. But my experience was completely different. I think that once he came to know you, he was very social. And for some reason, I was very close to him. Consequently, every time I visited the US, I made a point to go to Chicago to see him.

On one of those visits, he was working on his last book, on Newton’s Principia. He was very excited about it. He took me to the University of Chicago archives. In that library I saw handwritten notes by Newton. It was amazing. I will never forget it.

PT: What did you do after you finished your PhD?

BUTI: I returned to India—as required by my government fellowship—and joined the University of Delhi in a scheme for people coming back from abroad after doing their PhD. This was not a faculty position. I started doing research and teaching in the physics department.

After a couple of years I decided to go back to the US for my postdoc. I went to the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.

Then, back in India, I worked at the Physical Research Laboratory [PRL], a National Research Institute in Ahmedabad. I joined PRL as an associate professor and later became a senior professor and then dean of sciences there. Over the years, I also spent time in the US at other NASA centers—at Ames Research Center in 1972–73 and at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 1987–89 and again in 1997–2001.

PT: What scientific contributions are you most proud of?

BUTI: There are quite a few things. As a plasma physicist, I specialize in theoretical aspects of some intriguing fundamental problems encountered in the laboratory as well as in space plasmas. In approaching any problem, I start from the fundamental equations governing the system under review and construct a general mathematical model. I then proceed to apply the model to interpret the observed phenomena in laboratory, space, and astrophysical plasmas. I have worked extensively in areas of nonlinear, turbulent, and chaotic processes in both relativistic and nonrelativistic plasmas. One example is the fascinating phenomenon of solitons, which have applications in so far unexplained observations of solar coronal heating.

Another example is that I have shown the possibility of the existence of coherence in an otherwise chaotic system. There are various observations confirming this. A beautiful example is the planet Jupiter, which simultaneously exhibits turbulence and chaos and its coherent Great Red Spot, seen by NASA’s Voyager 1 in March 1979.

PT: How did you get involved in ICTP?

BUTI: The first time I went there was as a research associate. Over a period of five years, you could visit ICTP three times for three months.

When ICTP founder Abdus Salam started the center, in 1964, his aim was to bring experience and education to scientists from developing countries. He would get speakers from developed countries, but the participants would be mostly from developing countries.

When I went for my second visit, Salam said to me, “How about taking responsibility for holding the plasma physics college?” The colleges, or schools, are held in alternate years, and the director of a particular college has to do all the administrative work—select participants, invite speakers, and so on. I did it starting in 1985. Seeing the young students, mostly from developing countries, interacting with senior people from around the world, and seeing the satisfaction on their faces, gave me a lot of satisfaction. It was hard work, but I enjoyed it.

After almost 18 years, in 2003, I told the ICTP director I had done enough, and that a younger person should take over.

PT: What have you been doing since then?

BUTI: In 2003 I started my foundation. Through the foundation I have established awards, managed by various institutes, for young scientists—and not-so-young scientists—and I have gold medals for women students at the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi, Madras, and Indore. We organize public lectures and run a science competition for schoolchildren. I’m also very proud about three awards initiated by my foundation for visually challenged college students at the University of Delhi.

The foundation has also started centers for science and society. The purpose is to increase interactions between natural and social scientists, and between scientists and nonscientists. I’m trying to use the foundation and its four centers [in Ahmedabad, Bareilly, Delhi, and Indore] to reduce the gender bias in STEM. I talk to administrators and policymakers and tell them we have got to do things to encourage women scientists.

People say, “You are a scientist—how come you decided to do philanthropy?” Maybe it was the influence of my father. Professionally he was a lawyer, but he was also a social worker and a freedom fighter—he worked tirelessly for India to be liberated from British rule. So I must have got the feeling from him that I should give back to society. So far, the funds for the foundation have been my personal funds.

Even though much of my time is devoted to the activities of my foundation, I’m still giving scientific lectures and lectures on women in science. And I attend conferences. I stopped doing research a number of years ago. But I go for scientific discussions. I keep track of what’s going on.

PT: In your generation, few women became physicists. Why did you stick with it?

BUTI: My mother died when I was very young, and I was brought up by my father. He was interested in mathematics. And he wanted all his children to go for higher education. My father was very proud that I received the government fellowship to study in the US.

He probably would have liked me to get married. But I told him, “Look, you know my nature; whatever responsibility I take up, I take up very seriously. If I get married, I will devote time to the family, so obviously I won’t be able to devote 100% to my profession, and I don’t want that.” He accepted my decision. I was very fortunate to have such an understanding and considerate father.

PT: What are your thoughts on the situation today in India for women in science?

BUTI: As far as science education for women, for some reason women are sort of scared to go into physics and mathematics. But I would like to emphasize that this is not a problem only in India, it’s a universal problem. In fact, when I was in Chicago, in my year only three female students joined the physics department, and we were all foreigners.

Since then, the gap has decreased in the US and Europe rather fast. In India it has not decreased as fast, but we are working very hard along those lines. Now in some universities, some physics departments have 50% women students, but when it comes to going for a science career, the number drops significantly.

We have to work hard to bring about some changes in society, namely to convince people that family responsibilities should be shared by men and women. And in my opinion, women themselves have to take strong initiative to convince their families and themselves that they can and should be able to pursue careers in science.