From the biography: Why particle physicist Ashutosh Kotwal took up a summer job at IBM as a student

In the summer of 1988, Prof Fortune asked whether Ashutosh would return to Los Alamos, but Ashutosh wanted to see how research in physics was used in industry. He decided to work at IBM.

He had a half-hour interview on the telephone. IBM’s Thomas J Watson Research Centre is in New York State, 25 miles from Manhattan. As it is the main research facility, 2,300 people work there. There are other smaller facilities in Cambridge, Albany, Zurich, Tokyo and Silicon Valley.

IBM is known all over the world for its high-speed computers, its storage discs and its mainframe computers. Ashutosh worked on the high-definition flat-panel television screen. He devised mathematical models for amorphous silicon transistors. He wrote the equations that would help put these transistors on to computer screens. He checked whether they were the right fit and had the appropriate characteristics. These transistors are still used in liquid crystal displays (LCD).

IBM was then working on these liquid crystal display (LCD) screens. They were used first in computers and then to replace the cathode ray tube in television sets. Each pixel in an image on the screen is matched to an amorphous silicon transistor that controls the voltage on it.

It was Ashutosh’s job to measure and analyse the conduction properties of these transistors. The integrated circuits would be inscribed on a sheet of glass; a television screen of this kind would be only an inch thick and could be hung on the wall like a painting. It was a novel idea when Ashutosh worked on it. The silicon transistors are placed on the screen at low temperatures. At higher temperatures, this did not work because the glass melts. At low temperatures, the amorphous silicon transistors had different characteristics from the crystalline silicon transistors that were commonly used. These characteristics had to be measured. IBM had the best instruments for this and Ashutosh made precise measurements of the transistors’ voltage-current functions.

Then he found that these measurements could not be explained by existing calculations. Ashutosh decided to study the physics equations of amorphous silicon and wrote his own equations for these transistors. He then wrote a detailed computer program to calculate the solutions of these equations. He would work on the computer all night long and obtain the desired results by the next morning. He devised many computer models to match the measurements and the results of the monitoring experiments.

In the beginning, the computer he used was a small desktop. As the complexity of his calculations increased, the need for a faster computer was felt. He asked for a high-speed computer. He could then calculate multiple characteristics at the same time.

He worked at IBM in this manner for two months. He had to make a presentation of this work. He wrote a paper as well. Many people sought out the paper. There was a large audience at his presentation. His boss’s boss was also present. There was a long discussion. Many heads nodded in approval and assent. There were also some naysayers. There were many PhDs present. Ashutosh had not even started his PhD and this made them defensive. The discussion went on for an hour and a half.

The paper he wrote titled “A device model for the amorphous silicon staggered electrode thin film transistor” was published in a special issue of the journal of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. He co-authored the paper with his supervisor, Dr RR Troutman. These amorphous silicon thin-film transistors are now used for all active-matrix liquid crystal displays, such as computer and laptop screens, and flat-screen televisions.

In the summer of 1989, Troutman invited him to come back to IBM but by this time he was working on his PhD at Harvard in particle physics and it was not possible for him to return.

In July 1988, we were in Iraq when we heard of my father’s death. By this time, Ashutosh had spent five years in the US. Seeing how good he was at his studies, Balasaheb had dreamt of his grandson as an IAS officer. He felt bad that Ashutosh had abandoned IIT, had left the National Talent Scholarship behind and gone abroad to study, but he had hidden his feelings. For him, Harvard had a certain glamour attached to it because it was John F Kennedy’s alma mater. So he was very happy when Ashutosh announced that he would be doing his PhD there.

Ashutosh was alone in the US when he heard about his grandfather’s death. I have no way to understand what his responses were, how he dealt with this bereavement. When we told him over the telephone, he said, “Haan”, but later, in a letter, he said, “An era is over. My childhood has come to an end.”

While he was working at IBM, he was living in New York. His studies at UPenn were over. He had moved his stuff to a friend’s house as he had to vacate the hostel. In New York, he managed to find some time to play tennis despite the demands of his job.

After two-and-a-half months of work at IBM, in September 1988, he left New York to stay in Boston. He stayed in Boston for two years and then moved to a town called Geneva near Chicago because he wanted to do his PhD on the E665 experiment which was being conducted at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory located nearby at Batavia, Illinois. He rented a small house in Geneva along with two housemates, Tom, an American, and Fotis, a Greek, both his friends from Harvard.

Excerpted with permission from Beyond the Higgs Boson: The W Boson and Dr Ashutosh Kotwal’s Quest for the Unknown, Manik Kotwal, translated from Marathi by Jerry Pinto, HarperCollins India.