K S Krishnan Papers: DCV Mallik, 2025-04-29

Dipankar Vasumallik is a retired professor from the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bangalore and also a historian of science. He was born on 19 September 1946 in Kolkata, India. He grew up on the campus of College of Engineering and Technology in Jadavpur, where his father, Prabir Chandra Vasumallik, was the registrar.

He completed his schooling in Kolkata in 1963. Developing an early interest in stars and in physics, he joined Presidency College (University of Calcutta), where he earned an honours degree in Physics in 1966. He went on to complete a Master’s degree with a specialisation in Nuclear Physics from the University of Calcutta in 1968. He received his PhD in 1973 from the Department of Astronomy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where his doctoral research focused on gaseous nebulae.

Following his PhD, he joined the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, formerly the Kodaikanal Observatory, and settled in Bangalore, India. His research has primarily centred on interstellar matter and astrophysics of nebulae. He is the co-author of KS Krishnan: His Life and and Work, written along with Sabyasachi Chatterjee, after several years of research on materials that now form a physical collection at the Archives at NCBS.