Ravishankar Sundararaman from Anushaktinagar would go stargazing as a child. He got his first computer in 1999 and learnt programming in Visual Basic soon after, and got hooked on to it. He would lock himself in his room and secretly write graphics programmes, when his parents thought he was studying.
He went on to become a third ranker in the IIT and got a gold medal in the international physics Olympiad in 2002. Later he did MSc in physics from IIT Kanpur and is now pursuing his PhD in Cornell University. He has his own blog too where he writes about physics – including poetry inspired by physics! He speaks to CG Plus, about his love for physics and how the Olympiads helped him:
“I’ve been interested in physics for as far back as I can remember. The idea that phenomena in nature, no matter how complex, can be explained by a set of basic assumptions and a mathematical model is quite appealing to me. Meeting other people who were genuinely interested in mathematics and the sciences in all those Olympiad training camps was
very encouraging and facilitated healthy competition that really motivated me to learn much more in high school than I would have in isolation.
