Vasant Itagi

Vasant Itagi, who in 1969 built the first laser at an Indian university, passed away on 10 May 2022 from age-related health problems.

Itagi was born in Dharwad, India, on 6 June 1933, and he completed his education there. He received his PhD in physics (working on theoretical quantum mechanics) from Karnataka University in 1965 under the guidance of N. R. Tawde. After his PhD, Itagi joined the newly formed physics department at Marathwada University, Aurangabad, where he served as the head of the department for two decades and moved on to work on experimental optics and spectroscopy. During his tenure, he established a laser research center and transformed it into one of national prominence.

He built the first laser at an Indian university, a CO₂ laser, in 1969. The following year, he was invited to spend an academic year at the Central Research Institute in Budapest, where he did experimental and theoretical work on metal ion lasers. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, he worked on prototypes of nitrogen and dye lasers with innovative designs.

This was a time when India had a closed economy. Procuring components for building the lasers as well as finding skilled machine-shop workers was not easy in a small town like Aurangabad. Itagi’s designs included innovations such as a folded water dielectric pulse-forming line that terminated in the laser head and low impedance spark-gap switches for fast-switching and better impedance matching. His prototyping work culminated in building a short-pulse high-intensity nitrogen laser (~700 kW/cm², < 10 ns pulse width). His dye laser work was a result of using the nitrogen laser as a pump to create lasing in several dyes.

Subsequently, Itagi developed applications for his nitrogen laser, a high-intensity system for the time. Measuring the voltage profile of short high-voltage pulses with techniques that would minimally alter the voltage profile through parasitic loading of the pulse-generating circuit was a hot topic of the time for pulsed-power applications such as plasma confinement in tokamaks. Itagi developed a fast, contactless electro-optic Kerr-effect-based technique for ultrafast high-voltage measurement.

In the early 1980s, Itagi spent a year in the US on a Fulbright scholarship. The time was shared between Michael Feld’s laser spectroscopy lab at MIT and Arthur Schawlow’s laser lab at Stanford, where he did experimental work.

Over the next decade, Itagi and his group worked on plasma spectroscopy applications of his laser systems such as space-time fluorescence analysis of laser-induced plasma generated on the surface of different metals in low-pressure gas environments or ultralow-pressure vacuums. He and his students were using laser-induced plasma spectroscopy to do spectrochemical analyses of various elements as early as 1987. During this time, he also worked on theoretical aspects of molecular spectroscopy.

Aurangabad has a lot of history around it and is frequented by tourists worldwide. During his tenure, Itagi had the privilege of playing host to a lot of eminent scientists and Nobel laureates visiting Aurangabad during their trips to India. These included V. A. Fock, Hans Bethe, and Gerhard Herzberg.

Itagi was also known for his teaching. Two of his courses on quantum mechanics and relativity were sought after. He also advised more than a dozen doctoral students. The state of Maharashtra presented him with a special award for his teaching contributions. He retired in 1993.

Itagi served on many national committees for science and education. He was a lifelong member of the Indian laser association and the Indian Association of Physics Teachers. He was also an emeritus subscriber of Physics Today until the age of 80, when his eyesight started to fail him.

His other interests included cricket and Indian classical music. He used to open the batting for Karnataka college during his student days and served as a first-class umpire for some time. He had a hobby of playing the flute. He is survived by his wife, who also retired as a physicist, and a son who is a scientist at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland.