V Radhakrishnan is with the Raman Research Institute. His interests are mainly nautics, aeronautics and electronics, and he is currently engaged in a project that involves all these areas.

There are some aspects of the life and writings of G I Taylor to appreciate which, one does not have to be mathematically gifted. And it is one of these aspects with which I am familiar, that I would like to describe here. This was his love of sailing, a passion I share, albeit with less understanding than his genius brought to this activity. Looking back late in life, he describes his career as a ‘lifetime on the waves, mathematically and nautically’, and bemoans the passing of the age of amateur scientists. Untenable as the amateur approach to science may appear to most in today’s professional world, I cannot share more strongly his sentiments on this matter. Another common interest is flying, that he learned to do at the beginning of World War I, and about which he has many interesting anecdotes from those very early days of aeronautics. But the brief I have here is to deal with nautics.

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Address for Correspondence
V Radhakrishnan
Raman Research Institute
Bangalore 560 080, India.
Email:rad@rri.res.in