A Genuine Famine to Famous Story
Dr. Mani Lal Bhaumik – The LASIK Magician.
Rising from Mud to Marbles, Mani Bhaumik has a story to tell. From no shoes to wear till College to residing in Beverly Hills – He has truly seen it all.
In 1943, three million people died of starvation and malnutrition during the Bengal famine. There was extreme penury all around. But even amid these difficulties, there was a 12-year-old boy who used to dream big every night. He often thought he could easily touch the stars.
Even today multimillionaire laser scientist Mani Bhaumik sometimes wakes up in his Bel Air marble mansion wondering why he is alive and here.
Considering his poverty-stricken childhood in famine-hit Bengal in the early 1940s, he was supposed to be doomed.
However, the poor village boy defied all odds, won scholarship for higher education in India, came to America on a Sloan foundation fellowship, co-invented the excimer laser and became rich and famous. Truly, Mani Bhaumik’s story is the stuff of fairy tales.
He was born in a mud hut but went on to own marble mansions at Beverly Hills, Bel Air, Malibu and Palos Verdes. Born in a small village in Siuri, Medinipore, West Bengal, India, and thrust into the vortex of the struggle for Indian independence, he almost died of hunger in the 1942 Bengal famine, but went on to wine and dine Hollywood stars and celebrities. Education provided him a way out of the crushing cycle of poverty. He walked barefoot four miles daily to school but went on to become a jet-setter and own limousines. He studied by lamp at night but went on to become India’s first to receive a Ph.D in 1958 from the IIT, Kharagpur.
Today, it seems as if he has moved light years away from his origins. Cruising in his limousine on the way to the famous Bel Air Hotel for his dinner, the septuagenarian physicist, who is lighted in American Men and Women in Science and Who in America, says,
“I am alive because my grandmother died fiving me her portion of the food during the famine that killed three million in Bengal. I was 12. Whenever I tell people my story, they cannot believe that I have come from such a God-forsaken place. I have come out of a black hole.”
His hard work paid off and Mani topped the Kolaghat High School to win scholarship to college in 1947.
“Had that scholarship not materialized, I wouldn’t have gone to college and remained mired in poverty,” he says with a tinge of sadness in his voice. Calcutta’s Scottish Church College was a big quantum jump from his mud house. “I bought my first pair of shoes in life when I joined college. I was 16 then, and I felt as if I had landed in New York or Paris. I used to dream about big cities in my mud house and now my dream was becoming a reality.”
After a pause, he adds,
“Affluence is fine to a point. It doesn’t necessarily lead to mental peace and happiness. On the contrary, it may lead to inner crises.”
He received a Bachelor of Science degree from Scottish Church College and an M. Sc. from the University of Calcutta. He won the attention of Satyendra Nath Bose (creator of the Bose – Einstein statistics) who encouraged his prodigious curiosity. Bhaumik became the first student to receive Ph.D. degree from the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur in history when he received his Ph.D. in quantum physics in 1958.
Receiving a Sloan Foundation Fellowship in 1959, Dr. Bhaumik came to the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) for post-doctoral studies. In 1961, he joined the Quantum Electronics Division at Xerox Electro-Optical Systems in Pasadena and began his career as a laser scientist.
As the leader of the team, Dr. Bhaumik announced the successful demonstration of the world’s first efficient excimer laser at the Denver , Colorado meeting of the Optical Society of America in May 1973. Subsequently, it found extensive use as the type of laser that made possible the immensely popular LASIK eye surgery, eliminating the need for glasses or contact lenses in many cases requiring vision correction.
Dr. Mani Bhaumik is the creator and co-executive producer of the award winning animated TV Series, Cosmic Quantum Ray. The TV series intended to spark children’s interest in quantum physics and cosmology, has been selected as a special public outreach program by IYA2009 declared by UN General Assembly and partially administered by UNESCO. The show has been distributed for broadcast worldwide and would premier in the US cable TV market in fall of 2010, reaching 60 million households through the newly created HUB channel.
An $11 million (Largest amount ever) gift to UCLA from physicist and philanthropist Mani Bhaumik was made to establish a center devoted to advancing knowledge of the basic laws of nature.
He is currently associated with University of California, Los Angeles and California State University, Long Beach. Dr. Bhaumik has published over fifty papers in various professional journals and is a holder of a dozen laser-related U.S. patents. His latest paper, Unified Field – the Universal Blueprint appeared in the February 2000 issue of the International Journal of Mathematics and Mathematical Sciences.
Dr Bhaumik has won many awards including the Padma Shri, in 2011, for his achievements in the field of science and engineering. He has also set up the Mani Bhaumik Educational Foundation, Kolkata, which funds the university education of several underprivileged but meritorious students from rural Bengal. And, recently, the man, who was born in poverty, donated $150 million to the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, his alma mater. His book, ‘Code Name God: The Spiritual Odyssey of a Man of Science’, which became a best-seller has been translated into 100 languages. It stated that the big divide between science and spirituality can be bridged.
He is not wrapping up any time soon – wait for more genius to come!
