The Physics department was started in the year 1946, offering B.Sc. Degree course in Physics. Prof. S. Narayanamoorthy was the first Head of the Department, succeeded by Prof. K.Lakshminarayanan, Prof. J. Kalyanaraman, Prof. R. Raghavan, Prof. G. Suryanarayanan, Prof.A. Ramachandran, Dr. N.S. Venkatasubramanian, Dr. V. Murugan and Dr. K. Sethusankar. Dr.S. Jayakumar is presently the Head of the Department.

M.Sc. Degree course was started in the year 1981. The department was recognized for conducting Ph.D. programme in the year 2003. 

The sanctioned strength of faculty is 12. At present, there are 7 regular staff members and 3 management staff members. Out of the 7 regular staff members, 6 have got Ph.D. degree. The remaining one is currently undergoing part-time Ph.D. programme. Our members of the staff viz. Dr. S. Jayakumar, Dr. G. M. Brahmanandhan, Dr. S. Krishnan, Dr. G. Hirankumar, Dr. C. Pandian are recognized to supervise Ph.D. students. So far, 15 students have completed Ph.D. degree from this department. There are TWO full-time and ONE part-time student, currently undergoing Ph.D. programme in the department. Teachers of this department are very resourceful and accomplished in different areas of Physics. For a small department of this size, the number of research areas of interest is very diverse which includes quantum groups, X-ray crystallography, spectroscopy, nuclear physics, non-destructive testing, magnetism, non-linear ultrasonics, superconductivity and solid state nuclear magnetic resonance. The total number of research papers (refereed papers) published by all the staff members (which, of course, includes their research work in other institutes as well) is more than 200 in national and international journals with good
citation indices. 

The department has one UG lab, one PG lab and a computer lab with 12 computer systems. The department has received PG grant from the UGC (which is sanctioned based on the number of papers published by the members of staff in each plan period), for all the plan periods.

The department has a long tradition of producing bright students. Dr. M. Seetharaman, a gold medallist, former Head of the Department of Theoretical Physics, University of Madras is one of the distinguished alumni of this department. Dr. Rajaram Nithyananda of Raman Research Institute (Retd,) and former Director of National Centre for Radio Astrophysics, TIFR, a distinguished theoretical astrophysicist is also an alumnus of this department. The list of the distinguished alumni of this department includes Dr. K. Srinivasa Rao of Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Dr. K. Markandeyalu, Head of the Department of Physics, IIT, Madras and Dr. Pattabiraman, Department of Physics, IIT, Madras to name a few. Dr. P.C.Bharadwaj, an alumnus of this department has recently joined IIT Gandhinagar, Gujarat as a faculty member. Dr. Sethuraman Panchanathan who studied B.Sc. Physics in our Department, in the year 1981 was nominated by President of USA Barack Obama as a director of the National Science Board of National Science Foundation on June 13,2014. Mr. Ganguly and Mr. Madukar, who got their M.Sc. degrees from this department, are now doing their Ph.D. courses in the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore and Raman Research Institute, Bangalore, respectively. Mr. Ajith Padmanabhan, another M.Sc. student from our college is now doing Ph.D. in Bernstein Institute of Computational Neuroscience, Freighburg, Germany. Sundaresan Sridhar, a former student of this Department is currently an Erasmus Mundus fellow pursuing Master’s Degree in the University of Lorraine, Nancy, France. Many of our former students are currently working as Assistant Professors and Post Graduate Teachers in reputed Colleges and Schools. Also many of our former students are also pursuing higher studies in several research institutes of excellence in India and abroad. A good number of students of this department get selected for jobs in campus interviews conducted by IT and other companies, every year.

We have introduced a number of features in the curricula which are unique among the autonomous colleges in the city. Recently, in February 2024, the UG and PG syllabi were revised to keep pace with the changing requirements. 

CONTACT DETAILS
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