Obituary of S. N. Ghoshal

Dr. Ghoshal was born in 1923, did his MSc from Calcutta University, India, and completed his PhD under Professor Emilio Segre (co-winner of the Nobel Prize with Owen Chamberlain on anti-particles in 1959) at UC Berkeley. Dr. Ghoshal’s pioneering work 2 was to verify Bohr’s Theory of Compound Nucleus in 1950, which was perhaps the hottest topic during that time in Nuclear Physics. Since then, he contributed extensively to experimental nuclear physics, education and administration in Lucknow and Calcutta, India. He wrote several excellent textbooks in physics which are used widely in India and in other countries. Dr. Ghoshal was a great professor and a wonderful human being. Lately, he had been bedridden with a stroke. He was about 84 yrs. old. He is survived by his wife, son, daughter-in-law and a granddaughter. All of us, including many others who benefited from his teaching and research, shall miss him dearly.

Dr. Arjun N. Saxena

Emeritus Professor

1. “Early Work on Nuclear Shell Structure: Beta Decay and Nucleon Pairing Interactions”, ms., Call No. MP 2007-742, 54 pages, Misc. Physics Collection, Niels Bohr Library, American Institute of Physics, One Physics Ellipse, College Park, MD 20740; January 26, 2007.

2. “An Experimental Verification of the Theory of Compound Nucleus”, Phy. Rev. 80, 939 (1950).