Mukul Ranjan Kundu (10 February 1930 – 16 June 2010), was an Indian solar physicist, known best as a pioneer of radio observations of the Sun. Early in his career, he showed that the Sun's 10.7 centimetre radio flux is correlated with the level of ionisation in the Earth's ionosphere. The 10.7 cm flux is now used as a standard proxy for the level of magnetic activity on the Sun. He served on the editorial board of the journal ''Solar Physics'' and was awarded the

George Ellery Hale Prize The George Ellery Hale Prize, or Hale Prize, is awarded annually by the Solar Physics Division of the American Astronomical Society for outstanding contributions over an extended period of time to the field of solar astronomy. The prize is named in ...

in 2007.

Life and career

Kundu was born in

Calcutta Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , List of renamed places in India#West Bengal, the official name until 2001) is the Capital city, capital of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of West Bengal, on the eastern ba ...

, India on 10 February 1930. He studied at the

University of Calcutta The University of Calcutta (informally known as Calcutta University; CU) is a public collegiate state university in India, located in Kolkata, West Bengal, India. Considered one of best state research university all over India every year, ...

, receiving his BSc in Physics in 1949 and his MSc in Radio Physics and Electronics in 1951. In 1954, he took a government scholarship to study at the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris and transferred with the radio group to the Paris Observatory. He obtained his PhD from Sorbonne in 1957. He started working at the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

in 1959 and moved to

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to tea ...

as an associate professor in 1962. In 1965, he return to India to join the

Tata Institute of Fundamental Research Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) is a public deemed research university located in Mumbai, India that is dedicated to basic research in mathematics and the sciences. It is a Deemed University and works under the umbrella of the ...

until 1968, when he became a full professor at the

University of Maryland, College Park The University of Maryland, College Park (University of Maryland, UMD, or simply Maryland) is a public land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland. Founded in 1856, UMD is the flagship institution of the University System of M ...

, where he remained until his death on 16 June 2010. Kundu's most influential work was a textbook, ''Solar Radio Astronomy'', which was published by Wiley in 1965. He was a fellow of the American Physical Society. Kundu also received the award of U.S.Senior Scientist from the

Humboldt Foundation The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (german: Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung) is a foundation established by the government of the Federal Republic of Germany and funded by the Federal Foreign Office, the Federal Ministry of Education and Resea ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kundu, Mukul 1930 births 2010 deaths 20th-century Indian physicists Scientists from Kolkata University of Calcutta alumni University of Michigan faculty Cornell University faculty University of Maryland, College Park faculty Fellows of the American Physical Society