Jayant Vishnu Narlikar died on May 20, 2025, at the age of 86. His passing leaves a rare vacuum—not of technical competence, but of philosophical courage. In the realm of cosmology, where certainties are often built atop dizzying speculations, Narlikar stood apart: a rigorous scientist, a gifted writer, and an impish doubter of dogma. His was a mind unafraid of swimming against the cosmic current—of questioning the orthodoxy of the Big Bang, proposing alternative models, and warning that we may yet be confusing mathematical elegance with physical truth.
Born in 1938 in Kolhapur, India, into a scholarly family, Jayant was drawn to the stars early. His father, Vishnu Vasudev Narlikar, was a mathematician. After studying at Banaras Hindu University, Jayant went to Cambridge, where he became astronomer Fred Hoyle’s doctoral student and collaborator. Their Hoyle-Narlikar theory, formulated in the 1960s, proposed a radically different cosmological model—rooted in Mach’s principle and opposed to the Big Bang.
To many, that collaboration marked Narlikar’s lifelong allegiance: not to comfort or conformity, but to the clarity and creativity science demands at its best.
I met him several times, but one moment stands out. I had been invited to speak at the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA) in Pune on the importance of science communication for scientists. I was nervous: the room was packed with stalwarts of Indian astrophysics, and I was not an astronomer. And there he was, right in the front row—quiet, alert, gently smiling. He listened intently, took notes, and at the end, raised his hand to ask a few simple, childlike questions. Not to challenge but to genuinely engage. How do you get scientists to care about metaphors? How do you explain a galaxy to someone who has never noticed the wonders of the night sky? What about social media—do you see that as a friend or foe for scientists?
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It was a fleeting moment, but to me, unforgettable. Here was one of the greatest cosmologists of his generation, fully present in a conversation about storytelling and public engagement, treating it with the same seriousness as a discussion on space-time geometry.
He carried no intellectual ego. Only curiosity.
Narlikar’s most lasting institutional legacy may not have been a theory, but a place: the IUCAA, which he founded in Pune in 1988 and led as its first Director.
At a time when India’s physics talent was scattered across under-resourced departments, IUCAA was a radical idea—a national centre to empower university researchers, support theoretical and observational astronomy, and democratise access to the global frontier.
Under his leadership, IUCAA became a haven: intellectually vibrant, welcoming to young talent, and philosophically open. He insisted on minimal bureaucracy, rigorous mentorship, and vibrant seminars. Its popularisation wing, too, remains a beacon—a testament to Narlikar’s belief that science must be shared.
A Universe without a bang
“The Emperor’s New Clothes”—this was Narlikar’s metaphor for the modern state of cosmology. The Big Bang, now enshrined in textbooks, was to him a construct in danger of becoming faith. While others hailed the “concordance model” with its dark matter, dark energy, and 4 per cent visible universe, Narlikar raised a quiet but persistent eyebrow.
“Are we not,” he asked, “postulating new entities like the Pythagoreans’ counter-Earth—only to prop up a model that might be flawed?”
He was not alone in this view, but he was among its most articulate defenders. He reminded a generation raised on cosmic microwave background plots and inflationary models that many unassailable theories had fallen before, and that mathematical consistency does not equal truth.
“The scientific approach,” he wrote in Nature India, “requires a critical re-examination of the basic paradigm—especially when new assumptions multiply without independent support.”
Former Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri with J.V. Narlikar during the latter’s meeting with him in New Delhi on February 9, 1965. Narlikar was a research scholar at Cambridge at the time. He visited India at the invitation of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations.
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THE HINDU ARCHIVES
In short, he asked the question science most often forgets: “What if we’re wrong?”
The quasi-steady state model Narlikar developed with Hoyle and Geoffrey Burbidge eventually fell out of favour. But he was never deterred. For him, science was not about consensus but honesty.
He often quoted Soviet physicist Lev Landau’s line: “Cosmologists are always wrong but never in doubt.” For Narlikar, this was not a joke, it was a warning. When theories describe states beyond known physics—when the universe was 10-28 its current size—we must tread carefully. “To call it ‘precision cosmology’ is misleading,” he cautioned. “It is speculation in a tuxedo.”
His critique was not cynicism. It was tough love from someone who believed science should own its uncertainties—not mask them.
Narlikar’s imagination extended well beyond theory. He was an early champion of astrobiology in India, and his leadership of ISRO’s 2005 balloon experiment was a landmark. The payload, launched to 41 km, returned with samples analysed independently in Hyderabad and Pune. Both labs found viable, UV-resistant microorganisms, possibly of extraterrestrial origin.
Others scoffed. Narlikar stayed cautious but open. He revisited panspermia, the ancient idea that life’s seeds might come from space, with rigour rather than romance.
That balance—sceptical, yet receptive—defined his science.
Irreverence as method
At a time when academia rewards conformity, Narlikar remained a gadfly. Not anti-Big Bang, nor anti-theory, just anti-dogma.
Like Hoyle, who once said that Big Bang theorists had “run up the flag of surrender” by giving up on an eternal universe, Narlikar believed science must never stop asking questions.
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He was also deeply Indian in sensibility: cosmopolitan yet rooted. He wrote in English and Marathi, blending science with philosophy and history. He worried about rising pseudoscience and insisted that “scepticism is not a luxury. It is a necessity—especially in a democracy”.
His greatest contribution may not be any single theory, but a sensibility: that cosmology is as philosophical as it is physical. He often quoted Hoyle’s Vatican conference question: “Is the human brain capable of understanding the cosmos? And even if it is, have we reached that stage yet?”
Jayant Narlikar leaves behind numerous books, papers and an ethos that science is not catechism. He won many honours—the Padma Vibhushan, the Kalinga Prize, and presidencies of international commissions. What mattered most was his voice: elegant, precise, and never afraid to say “I don’t know”.
In a field that seeks to explain the entire universe, the most dangerous mistake is believing we already have. Jayant Narlikar never made that mistake.
And for that, the universe will feel smaller without him.
Subhra Priyadarshini is Chief Editor of Nature India and Nature’s global supported projects.
source: https://frontline.thehindu.com/other/obituary/jayant-narlikar-writer-astrophysicist-death-big-bang-iucaa-indian-science-research/article69601780.ece
