Mani Lal Bhaumik

Mani Lal Bhaumik (born 30 March 1931) is an Indian American physicist and an internationally bestselling author, celebrated lecturer, entrepreneur and philanthropist.

Mani Lal Bhaumik was born in a Bengali Mahishya family on March 30, 1931 in a small village in Tamluk and attended the Kola Union High School.

His father Gunodhar Bhaumik was a notable freedom fighter.

As a teenager, Bhaumik spent some time with Mahatma Gandhi in his Mahisadal camp.

In his boyhood Mani Lal was hugely influenced by freedom fighter Matangini Hazra, popularly known as Lady Gandhi.

He received a B.Sc. degree from Scottish Church College and an M.Sc. degree from the Rajabazar Science College campus of University of Calcutta.

He won the attention of Satyendra Nath Bose (creator of the Bose–Einstein statistics) who encouraged his prodigious curiosity.

Bhaumik became the first student to receive a doctorate from the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur when he received his Ph.D. degree in quantum physics in 1958.

His thesis was on Resonant Electronic Energy Transfers, a subject he would have cause to use in his work with lasers.

Receiving a Sloan Foundation Fellowship in 1959, Bhaumik went to the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) for a position as postdoctoral researcher.

In 1961, he joined the Quantum Electronics Division at Xerox Electro-Optical Systems in Pasadena and began his career as a laser scientist.

Concurrently, he taught Quantum physics and Astronomy at the California State University at Long Beach.

In 1968, he was enlisted by the Northrop Corporate Research Laboratory, where he rose to become the director of the Laser Technology Laboratory and led a team that made pioneering contributions in research on excimer laser technology.

One of the papers on this research was presented at the Denver, Colorado meeting of the Optical Society of America in March 1973.

At this meeting, Bhaumik presented substantial evidence to demonstrate for the first time that an excimer laser could be efficient and powerful enough for practical utilization.

The application of excimer lasers in Lasik eye surgery has resulted in vision correction in many cases.

Excimer Laser is also used for difficult-to-treat skin diseases including psoriasis and vitiligo.

The most widespread application of excimer laser has been in photolithography, a critical technology used in the manufacturing of microelectronic devices like cell phones.

His contributions to the development of new and high power lasers merited his election by his peers to be a fellow of both the American Physical Society and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

Bhaumik's current interest is performing innovative theoretical physics research in deciphering the century old enigma of quantum physics as well as sharing with the public the advances in quantum physics and cosmology and their implications for our lives, work, technology, and spiritual development.

This he endeavors to do through books such as the Code Name God and The Cosmic Detective, articles, lectures, and TV programs like the Cosmic Quantum Ray.

He is also interested in research on the origin and the nature of consciousness and how that knowledge can be utilized in improving the quality of our existence.

He has been invited to lecture all over the world, at forums including: Summer School on High-Power Gas Lasers, Capri, Italy 1975; International Symposium on Gas-Flow and Chemical Lasers, Belgium 1978; International Symposium on Gas Discharge Lasers, Grenoble, France 1979; Asoke Sarkar Memorial Lecture, Calcutta International Book Fair 2001; Institute of Culture, Calcutta, India 2006; Kolkata Society for Asian Studies, Kolkata, India 2015.

In 1989 his rags to reaches life story was featured in the popular TV series Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, distributed by Paramount Pictures.

Bhaumik has published over a hundred papers in various professional journals and is a holder of a dozen laser-related U.S. patents.

First published in the U.S. in 2005, Code Name God (Crossroads Publishing ISBN 0-8245-2519-1 ) is a distillation of Bhaumik's central thesis that the discoveries of modern physics can be reconciled with the great truths of the world religions when those truths are viewed as elements of what Aldous Huxley called "The Perennial Philosophy."

In particular, Bhaumik finds strong support in advanced physics and cosmology for the Neo-Platonic notion of "the One" (identified here as "The Source"), and conjectures that this existential source may reside in what is known as the quantum vacuum state and be in some manner co-eternal and co-equal with human consciousness.

The book and its premise have been praised by luminaries of both the literary and scientific words, including Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who wrote, "This example of a personal spiritual growth ... and re-evaluation of material values ... arouses very warm feelings. God is one and there are no major differences between religions."

He now devotes much of his time and energy to bringing this message to the public, including its younger members, for whom he has recently published The Cosmic Detective (Penguin 2008), a primer on cosmology, and created an award winning animated television series, Cosmic Quantum Ray, which air on the Hub Network and many other networks worldwide.

Bhaumik has instituted an annual International Award through the UCLA Neuropsychiatry Institute to acknowledge the best scientific evidence demonstrating the effect of mind in healing.

He has been involved in numerous community activities through his association with the Los Angeles Bombay Sister City Association; the Los Angeles St. Petersburg Sister City association; the Long Beach Calcutta sister City Association and others.

He has donated to various charitable organizations including the Thalians of Los Angeles.

He also established the Bhaumik Educational Foundation, based in Kolkata, which provides full scholarships to needy but brilliant students who wish to apply themselves to studies in science and technology.

In 2016 he also made an $11 million gift to UCLA to establish an Institute of Theoretical Physics.

He has also established AAAS Mani L. Bhaumik Award for Public Engagement with Science awarded to international contributors.

At the invitation from the government of India Bhaumik delivered a lecture at the Science Festival 2020.

His search spanned a decade and led him to the inference that the One Source at the hub of all spiritual traditions is grounded in scientific reality and not a mere creation of blind faith.

He also argues that science and spirituality are indeed two sides of the same coin, the coin being that unique human consciousness that allows us to perceive both ourselves and objective reality.

Therefore, he argues in his book Code Name God (Crossroads Publishing), the big divide between science and spirituality can be bridged.

The trick, Bhaumik asserts, is to see things in an entirely new light–a light shed upon by the recent revelations of quantum physics and cosmology.