I have been trying out Google’s NotebookLM over the last few days, and I thought of taking a shot at generating a podcast from the “What if” exhibit images that I had come across during my visit to the Birla Science & Technology Museum in Kolkata last month.
I had created a PDF from the images I had taken from the exhibit and uploaded it to NotebookLM as a source. Below is the audio overview from this file – just give it a listen.
This is nothing short of astounding given the way in which it is presented by the 2 hosts not just categorizing and covering each of the scientist’s contribution, but also explaining some of the key terms and providing context for their work. The last 4-5 min are even more interesting as it looks at the big picture and talks about nation building.
I also gave the interactive mode (currently in beta) a try wherein you can interrupt the hosts with your comments and questions. I brought in the family connection to Upendranath Brahmachari (my father had incidentally created the wikipedia page back in 2005), and also asked about potential conspiracy theories surrounding the lives of Homi Bhabha and Vikram Sarabhai. They seemed to do a good job of integrating my comments before bringing the discussion back on track, even sounding slightly vexed by the multiple interruptions.
Looks like 2025 is going to be another big year for the AI related developments given the plethora of announcements at the end of last year, and Google definitely has something interesting going on as always. Just hope that they don’t shut it down.
In case you are curious, here’s the PDF that I used:
And here’s the text summary that NotebookLM generated from the file:
Here is a list of all the scientists mentioned in the sources, along with their contributions:
Chemistry
- Thiruvengadam Rajendram Seshadri: Awarded a fictional Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his research on plant chemistry, primarily in oxygen heterocylics, and his contributions to the isolation and structural elucidation of flavonoid pigments.
- Prafulla Chandra Ray: Awarded a fictional Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his research on organic and inorganic nitrites and pioneering modern chemical research in India.
- Asima Chatterjee: Awarded a fictional Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her contributions to medicinal chemistry, with a special reference to alkaloids, coumarins and terpenoids, alongside her advancements in mechanistic organic analytical chemistry and development of anti-epileptic and anti-malarial drugs.
Physics
- Homi Jehangir Bhabha: Awarded a fictional Nobel Prize in Physics for explaining the scattering of positrons by electrons with exchange, his work on Dirac’s theory of the positron, the passage of fast electrons and the theory of cosmic showers.
- Meghnad Saha: Awarded a fictional Nobel Prize in Physics for formulating the Saha Equation, which allows for the calculation of the degree of ionization in a gas, a concept important in analyzing the spectra of stars and nebulae.
- Satyendra Nath Bose: Awarded a fictional Nobel Prize in Physics for his work describing elementary quantum particles, leading to Bose-Einstein Statistics which fueled the quantum revolution.
- Jagadish Chandra Bose: Awarded a fictional Nobel Prize in Physics for his quasi-optical experiments on the properties of very short radio waves, leading to improvements in the coherer and contributing to the development of solid-state physics.
Physiology or Medicine
- Upendranath Brahmachari: Awarded a fictional Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for creating the drug Urea Stibamine, used to treat visceral leishmaniasis or black fever, a severe infection caused by the Leishmania parasite.
- Dilip Mahalanabis: Awarded a fictional Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for being one of the earliest practitioners of vital oral rehydration therapy, whose research into diarrhoeal diseases saved millions of lives, including vulnerable infants.
Other Sciences
- Birbal Sahni: Awarded a fictional Nobel Prize in Paleobotany for examining evolutionary trends and geographical distributions, suggesting a separate order, Taxales, within the conifers.
- John Burdon Sanderson Haldane: Awarded a fictional Nobel Prize in Evolutionary Biology for his work in relating Darwinian evolutionary theory and Gregor Mendel’s concepts of heredity.
- Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis: Awarded a fictional Nobel Prize in Statistics for formulating the Mahalanobis distance – a statistical measure of comparison between two data sets – and for his work on innovative techniques for conducting large-scale sample surveys.
- Salim Moizuddin Abdul Ali: Awarded a fictional Nobel Prize in Ornithology for his systematic bird surveys across India and authoring books popularizing ornithology.
- Edavaleth Kakkat Janaki Ammal: Awarded a fictional Nobel Prize in Botany for her contributions to plant breeding, cytogenetics, phytogeography and her development of several hybrid crop species, including varieties of sweet sugarcane that allowed India to cultivate its own.
- Anna Modayil Mani: Awarded a fictional Nobel Prize in Meteorology for creating India’s first ozonesonde, making it easier for scientists to monitor the ozone layer.
- Vikram Ambalal Sarabhai Jain: Awarded a fictional Nobel Prize in Space Science for initiating space research and helping develop nuclear power in India.
- Verghese Kurien: Awarded a fictional Nobel Prize in Dairy Science for transforming India’s dairy industry by streamlining effective management and distribution strategies, making India the largest milk-producing country in the world.
- Mankombu Sambasivan Swaminathan: Awarded a fictional Nobel Prize in Agricultural Science for his contributions to the Green Revolution in India by introducing high-yielding varieties of wheat and rice, further developing high-yielding varieties of wheat and rice, and spearheading mass movements with farmers and scientists. His work helped save India and Pakistan from certain famine-like conditions in the 1960s.
- Manali Kallat Vainu Bappu: Awarded a fictional Nobel Prize in Astronomy for jointly discovering the Wilson-Bappu effect with astronomer Olin Chaddock Wilson.
- Vijay Pandurang Bhatkar: Awarded a fictional Nobel Prize in Computer Science for architecting India’s national initiative in supercomputing, where he spearheaded the development of India’s first supercomputer PARAM in 1990.
