Bal Phondke

Last updated August 05, 2019

Bal Phondke (born 22 April 1939) is the nom-de-plume of Dr Gajanan Phondke, a leading Marathi writer of science literature (fiction and non-fiction). He is credited in part to have started the science fiction genre of writing in Marathi literature. Alongside Dr. Jayant Narlikar's science fiction work Baal Phondke's works had a cult following in a generation of readers in Maharashtra.

Marathi is an Indo-Aryan language spoken predominantly by around 83.1 million Marathi people of Maharashtra, India. It is the official language and co-official language in the Maharashtra and Goa states of Western India, respectively, and is one of the 22 scheduled languages of India. At 83.1 million speakers in 2019, Marathi ranks 11th in the list of most spoken languages in the world. Marathi has the third largest number of native speakers in India, after Hindi and Bengali. The language has some of the oldest literature of all modern Indian languages, dating back to around 900 AD. The major dialects of Marathi are Standard Marathi and the Varhadi dialect. Koli and Malvani Konkani have been heavily influenced by Marathi varieties.

Science fiction Genre of speculative fiction

Science fiction is a genre of speculative fiction that has been called the "literature of ideas". It typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, time travel, parallel universes, fictional worlds, space exploration, and extraterrestrial life. It often explores the potential consequences of scientific innovations.

Marathi literature is the body of literature of Marathi, an Indo-Aryan language spoken mainly in the Indian state of Maharashtra and written in the Devanagari script.

He worked as a nuclear biologist at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre from 1962 to 1983. From 1983 to 1989, he was with the Times of India, serving as the Editor of Science Today magazine and also as the science editor of The Times of India broadsheet.^[1]^[2]

The Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) is India's premier nuclear research facility, headquartered in Trombay, Mumbai, Maharashtra. BARC is a multi-disciplinary research centre with extensive infrastructure for advanced research and development covering the entire spectrum of nuclear science, engineering and related areas.

The Times of India (TOI) is an Indian English-language daily newspaper owned by The Times Group. It is the third-largest newspaper in India by circulation and largest selling English-language daily in the world according to Audit Bureau of Circulations (India). It is the oldest English-language newspaper in India still in circulation, albeit under different names since its first edition published in 1838. It is also the second-oldest Indian newspaper still in circulation after the Bombay Samachar.

He later served as the director of the Publications and Information Directorate of CSIR (Council of Scientific and Industrial Research), retiring in 1999.

The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research abbreviated as CSIR was established by the Government of India in September of 1942 as an autonomous body that has emerged as the largest research and development organisation in India.

After retirement, he served as a guide for various universities and also wrote science articles for several publications.

Bal Phondke has also published books on fun with mathematics.

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Jayant Vishnu Narlikar is an Indian astrophysicist. He developed with Sir Fred Hoyle the conformal gravity theory, known as Hoyle–Narlikar theory. It synthesizes Albert Einstein's theory of relativity and Mach's principle. It proposes that the inertial mass of a particle is a function of the masses of all other particles, multiplied by a coupling constant, which is a function of cosmic epoch.

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References

↑ Krishna, R (4 January 2009). "Arnab Bhattacharya hopes to get Mumbaikars chatty about science". DNA India . Retrieved 7 December 2010.
↑ "Nukes are 'weapons of peace': Kakodkar". Indian Express. 19 March 2010. Retrieved 7 December 2010.

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[Arnab_Bhattacharya_hopes_to_get_Mumbaikars_chatty_about_science-1] Krishna, R (4 January 2009). "Arnab Bhattacharya hopes to get Mumbaikars chatty about science". DNA India . Retrieved 7 December 2010.

[Nukes_are_'weapons_of_peace':_Kakodkar-2] "Nukes are 'weapons of peace': Kakodkar". Indian Express. 19 March 2010. Retrieved 7 December 2010.