Timir Datta
{{short description|Indian-American physicist}}
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{{autobiography|date=May 2014}}
{{notability|Academics|date=May 2014}}
{{BLP primary sources|date=November 2013}}
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Timir Datta is an Indian-American physicist specializing in high transition temperature superconductors and a professor of physics in the department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of South Carolina, in Columbia, South Carolina.
Early life and education
Datta grew up in India along with elder brother Jyotirmoy Datta a noted journalist; his father B.N. Dutt a scion of two land owning families from Khulna and Jessore in south central Bengal (British India) was an eminent sugar-refining engineer and on his mother's side a relative of Michael Madhusudan Dutt, the famed poet. He received a master's degree in theoretical plasma physics from Boston College in 1974 under the direction of Gabor Kalman.G Kalman, T Datta, KI Golden (1975), [https://journals.aps.org/pra/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevA.12.1125 Approximation schemes for strongly coupled plasmas], Physical Review A 12 (3), 1125 Datta also worked at the Jet Propulsion laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, as a pre-doctoral NASA research associate of Robert Somoano. He also collaborated with Carl H. Brans at Loyola University New Orleans on a gravitational problem of frame dragging and worked with John Perdew on the behavior of charge density waves in jellium. Datta is of Bengali origin.{{cn|date=March 2025}}
Work and research history
Datta was a NSF post-doctoral fellow with Marvin Silver and studied charge propagation in non-crystalline systemsT Datta, M Silver (1981), [https://pubs.aip.org/aip/apl/article-abstract/38/11/903/525245/Schottky-barrier-profile-in-a-silicon-alloys?redirectedFrom=fulltext Schottky‐barrier profile in a‐silicon alloys], Applied Physics Letters 38 (11), 903-905 at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. At UNC-CH he continued his theoretical interests and worked on retarded Vander Waals potentialT Datta, LH Ford (1981), [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0375960181901468 Retarded Van der Waals potential between a conducting plane and a polarizable particle], Physics Letters A 83 (7), 314-316 with L. H. Ford. Since 1982, he has been on the faculty of the University of South Carolina in Columbia.{{cn|date=March 2025}}
He collaborated with several laboratories involved with the early discoveries of high temperature superconductivity, especially the team at NRL, led by Donald U Gubser and Stuart Wolf. This research group at USC was the also first to observe ZZ Sheng, AM Hermann, A El Ali, C Almasan, J Estrada, T Datta, RJ Matson (1988), [https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.60.937 Superconductivity at 90 K in the Tl-Ba-Cu-O system], Physical Review Letters 60 (10), 937-940 (i) bulk Meissner effect in Tl-copper oxides and thus confirm the discovery by Allen Herman's team at the University of Arkansas of high temperature superconductivity in these compounds.PF Dahl (1992), Superconductivity: Its Historical Roots and Development from Mercury to the Ceramic Oxides, American Institute of Physics He coined the term "triple digit superconductivity",R Poole (8 April 1988), [https://doi.org/10.1126/science.240.4849.146 New Superconductors Answer Some Questions], Science 240 (4849), 146-147 and his group was the first to observe (ii) fractional quantum hall effect in 3-dimensional carbon.T Datta, M Bleiweiss, A Lungu, M Yin, Z Iqbal (2005), [https://arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0503166 Quantum Hall Effect at 40 kelvin: Evidence of MacroscopicQuantization in the Extreme Soft Limit], preprintM Bleiweiss, M Yin, J Amirzadeh, H Preston, T Datta (2004), [https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2004APS..MARV11010B/abstract Extreme Soft Limit Observation of Quantum Hall Effect in a 3-d Semiconductor], APS Meeting Abstracts 1, 11012
In a paper with Raphael Tsu he derived the first quantum mechanical wave impedance formula for Schrödinger wave functions.T Datta, R Tsu (2003), [https://arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0311479 Quantum Wave Resistance of Schrodinger Functions], preprint He was also the first to show that Bragg's law of X-ray scattering from crystals is a direct consequence of Euclidean length invariance of the incident wave vector; in fact Max von Laue's three diffraction equations are not independent but related by length conservation.T Datta (2015), [https://doi.org/10.1088/0031-8949/90/3/038002 Laue: right or wrong?], Physica Scripta 90(3), 038002
Datta is an active researcher, with over 100 papers listed in the SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS) as of 2014.SAO Astrophysics Data System (n.d.), [http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-abs_connect?db_key=PHY&qform=PHY&arxiv_sel=astro-ph&arxiv_sel=cond-mat&arxiv_sel=cs&arxiv_sel=gr-qc&arxiv_sel=hep-ex&arxiv_sel=hep-lat&arxiv_sel=hep-ph&arxiv_sel=hep-th&arxiv_sel=math&arxiv_sel=math-ph&arxiv_sel=nlin&arxiv_sel=nucl-ex&arxiv_sel=nucl-th&arxiv_sel=physics&arxiv_sel=quant-ph&arxiv_sel=q-bio&aut_req=YES&aut_logic=OR&author=Datta%2C+Timir+&ned_query=YES&sim_query=YES&start_mon=&start_year=&end_mon=&end_year=&ttl_logic=OR&title=&txt_logic=OR&text=&nr_to_return=200&start_nr=1&jou_pick=ALL&ref_stems=&data_and=ALL&group_and=ALL&start_entry_day=&start_entry_mon=&start_entry_year=&end_entry_day=&end_entry_mon=&end_entry_year=&min_score=&sort=SCORE&data_type=SHORT&aut_syn=YES&ttl_syn=YES&txt_syn=YES&aut_wt=1.0&ttl_wt=0.3&txt_wt=3.0&aut_wgt=YES&obj_wgt=YES&ttl_wgt=YES&txt_wgt=YES&ttl_sco=YES&txt_sco=YES&version=1 Timir Datta Query Results]
=Patents=
Datta was issued one US patent in 1995: "Flux-trapped superconducting magnets and method of manufacture", with two co-inventors.{{US patent|5444425}}
=Anti-gravity work=
Datta was involved in the university-funded development of a "Gravity Generator" in 1996 and 1997, with then-fellow university researcher Douglas Torr.Faculty Senate of the University of South Carolina (1997), [https://web.archive.org/web/20140502013440/http://www.sc.edu/faculty/senate/97/annual/patentlist.html Patent and Copyright Committee List of Disclosures Reviewed Between July 1996 and June 1997] According to a leaked document from the Office of Technology Transfer at the University of South Carolina and confirmed to Wired reporter Charles Platt in 1998, the device would create a "force beam" in any desired direction and the university planned to patent and license this device. Neither information about this university research project nor any "Gravity Generator" device was ever made public.C Platt (June 3, 1998), [https://www.wired.com/wired/archive/6.03/antigravity_pr.html Breaking the Law of Gravity], Wired
Despite the apparent less than successful outcome of the "Gravity Generator" development effort with Torr, Datta became interested in the effects of electric fields on gravitation, expanding on Torr's theoretical work on the subject.M Yin, M Bleiweiss, R Prozorov, T Datta (2000), [http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2002APS..APRS12008Y Search for the Effects of Inhomogenous Electric Fields on Gravitation], APS Meeting AbstractsT Datta, M Yin, J Vargas (2002), [http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2004AIPC..699.1214D A Gravitational Experiment Involving Inhomogeneous Electric Fields], Space Technology and Applications 699, 1214-221
Selected publications
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See also
References
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External links
- [https://sc.edu/study/colleges_schools/artsandsciences/physics_and_astronomy/our_people/directory/datta_timir.php Timir Datta's page at the University of South Carolina]
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Category:University of South Carolina faculty
Category:Morrissey College of Arts & Sciences alumni
Category:American people of Bengali descent
Category:American people of Indian descent
Category:20th-century American physicists
Category:Year of birth missing (living people)