CYCLOTRON

Cyclotron, a documentary produced and directed by Jahnavi Phalkey and edited by Tanya Singh, is the story of how the world’s oldest particle accelerator – discarded in its original home in Rochester, New York – received a new lease of life in Chandigarh, when it was brought there by a young experimental physicist in 1967. As he tells the story in the film, Harnam Singh Hans had learned that the particle physics lab at Rochester had received a new accelerator and was looking to get rid of their old one, along with its analyser. “All this is yours, for free” he was told by Prof. Harry Fulbright, “but you have to transport it.” Singh jumped at the offer – an audacious move considering that at the time he had no job, nor any links with the scientific hierarchy in India. Soon, however, he managed to secure a position at the Kurukshetra University in Punjab. “The only thing I had was a post, and the hope that India was ready to help somebody bring back a machine.”