History of science has many instances in which seemingly uninteresting theoretical investigations, without any imminent important applications have led to major scientific discoveries at a later stage. Euler’s ‘principle of least action’, Newton’s work on gravitation, Einstein’s work on interaction of light and matter, photoelectric effect, relativity, etc., Bose’s concept of indistinguishable particles, and Boltzmann’s statistical methods etc., and the quest for a unified theory of gravitation and electromagnetism fall in this category.

To bring such issues into the fore and to inculcate into the student community the importance of theory in science, the programme ‘Science Theories’ is introduced. The programme will help the students to familiarize with such instances in the history of science and thus to broaden their outlook regarding scientific research and motivate them to think beyond imminent applications.  This program also envisages cultivating the culture of rigorously analyzing experimental results using mathematical tools and will introduce concepts such as simulation, modeling etc