Washington, June 30 (PTI): Bengal-born US physicist and philanthropist Mani Bhaumik has donated $11 million to the University of California, Los Angeles, to establish a centre devoted to advancing knowledge of the fundamental laws of nature.
"Bhaumik's donation is the largest in the history of both UCLA's department of physics and astronomy and the UCLA division of physical sciences," a university statement said.
"The Mani L. Bhaumik Institute for Theoretical Physics is intended to become a world-leading centre for theoretical physics research and intellectual inquiry."
Bhaumik had played a key role in developing laser technology that paved the way for Lasik eye surgery.
He was born in a remote village in Bengal and, as a child, slept on rags in the thatched-roof mud hut he shared with his parents and six siblings.
"I didn't own a pair of shoes until I was 16 and walked four miles to school and back in my bare feet," the university statement quoted him saying.
Studying under legendary physicist Satyendra Nath Bose, Bhaumik earned a master's from Calcutta University. In 1958, he became the first to earn a doctorate, in physics, from IIT Kharagpur.
Bhaumik came to the UCLA in 1959 - "with $3 in my pocket" - on a Sloan Foundation postdoctoral fellowship, his fellow villagers raising the money for his airfare, the statement said.
"I thought I'd died and gone to heaven," Bhaumik said of his arrival on campus. "Everyone was treated equally, not like back at home where the poor were treated like dirt."
The Bhaumik Institute will host visiting scholars, organise seminars and conferences, and begin a public outreach programme to teach the community at large about scientific advances by the university's physicists.
"It's very difficult to raise funds for this area, because people don't understand what theoretical physicists do," he said.
"But physics holds the answers to the most fundamental questions of our very existence. Imagine what could be solved right here at UCLA."
Bhaumik was awarded the Padma Shri in 2011.
