a factory to make straw boards from bamboo in bengaluru a soap factory in bengaluru and sandalwood oil factories in bengaluru and mysore the success of the sandalwood oil and soap factories made sandalwood and its products synonymous with karnatakanursery of institutesprof p balaram iisc director from 2005 to 2014 told toi in the 1940s when world warii ended it was clear that you needed a lot of technology in india and many engineering departments at iisc were started in the 40s and 50s these came much before the iits in fact people from here went on to create many other institutes and programmesduring wwii iisc contributed by training personnel manufacturing military and industrial goods and collaborating with hindustan aircraft limited now hindustan aeronautics limited to repair and maintain british and american warplanes this period saw an expansion of research in engineering and new departments such as those of aeronautical engineering metallurgy and mechanical engineering were added iisc saysbetween the 60s and the early 80s under director satish dhawan iiscs research areas grew to include materials science computer science and automation molecular biophysics and interdisciplinary work under the centre for theoretical studies which eventually led to the formation of other centres in ecology atmospheric and oceanic sciences and morethe social impact of advancements in science was a key focus during this period particularly under the cell for application of science and technology to rural areas astra which continues today as the centre for sustainable technologieseminent mindsdhawan is just one of the many big names associated with iisc its first director mw travers was an associate of sir william ramsay three of its directors were knighted sir ag bourne sir martin o foster and sir cv raman who also won a nobeliisc counts among its former students and faculty several eminent scientists like homi j bhabha founder of indias nuclear programme vikram sarabhai founder of indias space programme meteorologist anna mani biochemist and nutrition expert kamala sohonie and solid state and materials scientist cnr rao to name a fewone of the most important things to come out of iisc is the people while the contributions of bhabha sarabhai and dhawan are well known there are many more balaram said adding that iisc also played a key role in establishing other academic institutions including the iits and organisations like barc and isroimmediately after independence gn ramachandran started the physics department in madras university s ramaseshan started the department in iitm pk khelkhar started iitbombay as project officer and then iitkanpur as first director while jc ghosh was the first director of iitkharagpur he addedother prominent iiscians include prof roddam narasimha who conceived indias light combat aircraft tejas prof rohini godbole a physicist with multiple international awards known for her work on the higgs boson god particle for which physicists francois englert and peter higgs won the nobel in 2013 cv vishveshwara whose predictions nearly 50 years ago were credited by scientists from ligo after discovering gravitational waves for the first time