We, Raghavan Rangarajan (Ahmedabad University),SVM Satyanarayana (Pondicherry University)and Sivakumar(Hyderabad University)
had discussed the quality of physics education at college level and need to do something about it with Rajaji on several occasions. Once when he heard from Mathematics colleagues that there is a program Mathematics Training and Talent Search (MTTS), running successfully and giving quality training for UG/PG students, he remarked why not a similar program for Physics too and asked the three of us to start the Physics Training and Talent Search (PTTS) program. He asked us not to put his name anywhere and gave us full freedom in conceptualizing and working out the details. The first program was held in 2015, at Kuvempu University, with partial funding from IMSc and a few other institutions and also national academies. Rajaji came to this program as the chief guest and actively interacted with the BSc final year students, stayed for a few days, and actively participated in students’ presentations on the experiments they had completed.
This program has been running regularly since 2015 and Rajaji was always available for us to discuss and share his thoughts, and he actively participated in academic program discussions held, whenever he could. He was always very happy to know the developments in PTTS program.