Dr. Pasupathy was born on 1st October 1940 in Karur. He was named Pasupathy after the presiding deity of Karur, Pasupatheeswarar. He studied in Corley Higher Secondary School in Tambaram. After completing his schooling he joined B.Sc. Honors (Physics) in 1965 at Madras Christian College. In 1960 he joined the Atomic Energy Commission and then TIFR in Mumbai.
In 1963 he received a Fulbright Scholarship and traveled by ship to the US, completing his PhD in 1966 in theoretical physics under Prof. Robert Marshak at the University of Rochester. After a postdoc at Rockefeller university, he returned back to TIFR in 1968. He joined the newly formed Center for Theoretical Studies in 1976 at the Indian Institute of Science, where he served till 2003.
He loved Physics and IISc. He also wanted to see India grow and become self-reliant in science and energy and continued to do research until the day he passed at his home in Indiranagar on August 23, 2026.
It was a tremendous shock to hear about JP’s passing away.
I am immensely grateful to JP for many reasons. He was instrumental in getting me to join IISc, first by contacting me by phone when I was a postdoc in the US and encouraging me to apply to IISc, then hosting my first visit to CTS (as CHEP was called then) in 1986, and finally processing my faculty application when he was the Chair of CTS.
After I joined in 1988, JP was immensely helpful in finding campus accommodation and helping us to settle down in innumerable ways. JP was responsible for hiring several other faculty as well, leading to
a significant growth of CTS.
Apart from serving as the CTS Chair for many years, JP was an excellent Dean of Science, introducing a number of rules to helpstudents in different ways. He was also the first convener of the Joint Astronomy Programme.
JP was a person with strongly held opinions. He also had an interesting sense of humour, such as when a new student introduced himself as being from the Rann of Kutch, and JP replied, “Ah, the land of the wild ass”.
We did not see JP much in the last few years unfortunately, but we were very happy that he and ma’am graciously came to our daughter and son-in-law’s reception last year.
I will greatly miss JP. I wish his family all the strength to bear with this terrible loss.