Prof. V. Balakrishnan — Impact of online lectures
NPTEL and SWAYAM physics lecture series on YouTube
Statistics as of
V. Balakrishnan studied physics at St. Stephen's College, Delhi, and received his PhD in theoretical physics at Brandeis University in 1970. After a decade at TIFR and IGCAR Kalpakkam he joined IIT Madras in 1980, where he is now Professor Emeritus. He was elected a Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences in 1985.
He has written three books, two based on his courses: Elements of Nonequilibrium Statistical Mechanics (2008) and Mathematical Physics with Applications, Problems and Solutions (2017). The third book is Beyond the Crystalline State (1989).
He is a well-known, popular lecturer of physics. Seven of his courses were recorded for NPTEL and SWAYAM, from school-level mechanics and heat to graduate mathematical physics, nonlinear dynamics and statistical mechanics — lectures and views to date.
Their reach goes well past his own classroom. The comments below come from school students, undergraduates, working professionals, and university faculty in India and abroad; several rank these lectures above the equivalent courses they sat through at MIT, Cambridge or Stanford, and former students at IIT Madras write that they teach today because of him. In July 2022 IIT Madras established the V. Balakrishnan Institute Chair in his honour; the institute's director called him “one of the greatest teachers and researchers who had served in IIT Madras” and “the most loved, respected, and adored faculty of the Institute.”
Sources: Wikipedia · IIT Madras Department of Physics · IIT Madras announcement of the Institute Chair
Overall reach
Across all lecture series.
By lecture series
Selected comments
How these were chosen
These aren't hand-picked. A script reads all the comments on all 243 lectures and throws out everything that isn't really praise: questions, requests for lecture notes, gripes about the camera work, book lists, and the ones that are about his family rather than his teaching. Of 3,804 comments, 636 survive that.
The order tries to put the most convincing first. Someone who says he taught them at IIT Madras in 1983 carries more weight than “great lecture, thanks.” So does someone who tells you what they do for a living, or who has sat through the same course at MIT or Cambridge and says how it compared, or who names the actual physics. Likes count for something, but not much — a one-liner with 900 of them won't outrank a former student's account.
The India tick-box finds people who say where they are, which most don't bother to do, so it's a short list rather than a measure of reach in India.
Being a script, it misjudges things. Read a comment before you quote it.
Every lecture
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| Lecture | Series | Views | Likes | Comments |
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