Fission icon: A Wknd interview with an award-winning science historian

“There are many trite ways to describe the importance of what we do,” says science historian Jahnavi Phalkey. “‘If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu.’ If you are not asking certain questions and wanting to know,” Phalkey says, “then you will be known about, and your life will be shaped in ways in which you didn’t want it to be shaped.” The climate crisis is one example of seemingly distant science and technology altering the individual’s world. In research papers, and in her 2013 book Atomic State: Big Science in Twentieth Century India, she examines India’s nuclear programmes in a postcolonial context. *** Her next book, Phalkey says, will be rooted in her work on the history of statistical sampling in India, Meanwhile, she’s been interacting with her target reader in a rather unexpected way.