To the Das family; Sorry to hear about the loss of your father. Thinking of you and your family at this difficult time.

Dan & Margarita Farley

~ Daniel & Margarita Farley - July 21, 2019

Dear Professor Das,
I came to your lab in 1996 for a PhD in physics. My stay was short as I could not fit into theoretical physics and SUNY,Albany. When the guilt of leaving your lab after the wholehearted support from you during this time sent me into a quandary - you helped me make a decision with a simple line (which I use to help my students in similar situations): " always do what makes you happy. Do nothing that takes the smile from your heart". It cleared my doubts and I found a topic/field I liked and currently am a faculty in Indian Institute. The above statement has guided me all these years. For me you reside forever in that simple pure advice.
Thank you
Kavita

~ kavita vemuri - September 9, 2018

First of all,I would like to give enough courage to the Das Family to deal with the loss. I can not express enough of how we (KC family) feel upon hearing the news of our beloved Pitaji/ Aja to be no longer around us. However, his soul and memories shall always remain intact within our hearts. He is and will always be the angel to our family. Words are not enough to express his genuine nature and kindness to all the people around him. Thank you Aja for making our life more valuable and making things possible for me and my family through your humble contribution. Please rest well in the great space of heaven. We (Sarala, Shiva and I) have you inside our hearts always and forever. Love you (yours natini Aparajita)

~ Aparajita KC - August 28, 2017

He was the chairman of a session at an APS March meeting in which I gave a contributed talk during my grad school days. He was of course well known in the field of NMR. What I recall was that he was not very picky about sticking to the 10 min time limit and ok with some delay if it meant indulging in some scientific discussion! This was my only interaction with him some 30 years ago but was reminded of this on seeing his obituary on Facebook. May his soul rest in peace.

~ Avinash Mahajan - August 1, 2017

I am deeply saddened by the passing of Professor Tara Prasad Das. I had the honor and privilege of interacting closely with him for more than thirty years. He was a passionate and highly accomplished academician, a revered teacher and a very caring person. He was a guru in true sense and took genuine interest in the well-being of his mentees both during their training and after. Everyone who was associated with him will surely miss the presence of a truly lovable and compassionate person. Professor Das will remain immortal in the hearts and minds of many people like me who have benefitted from his wisdom and generosity. All of us in the Sahoo family offer our heartfelt sympathies to his grieving family and pray for his eternal soul to reach its ultimate destination and rest in peace.

~ Narayan Sahoo - July 31, 2017

My respectful condolences to Dr. Das's family. I was fortunate to be a patient of his son Dr. Shankar Das.

~ Linda Delfs - July 31, 2017

I am sorry to hear that Professor T. P. Das passed away recently. Works by him especially related to many body, relativistic and nuclear size effects in hyperfine interactions lay the foundation for further research on this subject.
I am a Japanese first year Ph.D. student and I have just started working on my thesis. Prof Das’ contributions to hyperfine interactions are very helpful for my research. One of his papers that I recently read was written by him about thirty years ago. His never fading work benefits young researchers like me beyond national borders. His work in the future will lead to new interpretations of nature and accurate theoretical reproductions of experimental values.
I might be too you to evaluate his work. However, I make an assertion that his work will shed light on researches on hyperfine interactions forever.

Ayaki Sunaga
Tokyo Metropolitan University

~ Ayaki Sunaga - July 27, 2017

I felt extremely sad by hearing the demise of Prof. T. P. Das. I remember my first meeting with Prof Das in Central Department of Physics, Tribhuvan University, Nepal in 2001 and many times after that. I had started study of HF calculations following his handout notes. That are still in my book-shelf. He was courteous gentleman and great scientists.

My deepest condolence and sympathy to Prof. Das’ family.

~ Amba D. Pant - July 26, 2017

A great physicist, an avid traveler and above all a great human being. I had the good opportunity to work with him closely and know his family from 2000 to 2009. After that also we were in contact. The last time I talked to him on phone was in July 2015. We, along with our group in the Central Department of Physics, TU, Nepal, had several papers electronic and associated properties of atoms, molecules and solids.
I am fortunate that I knew him and worked with him.

~ Sitaram Byahut - July 25, 2017

I feel myself so lucky to be a student of Professor Das; he was not only my teacher, but also my guide in life. Professor Das was a giant scientist, and a unique personality. He knew how to find talents in others, and make the best use of them.

I discovered this truth in my very first introductory talk with Professor Das. He explained to me what he saw in me, and what idea he stored for me to accomplish in the future. He made it clear to me that, it will be a risky venture, but it was a perfect match for my aptitude. I realized, later on, he was absolutely correct in his assessment of my own research interests. I enjoyed working on the project, and, I am glad that, in the end, it culminated into a successful resolution.

Professor Das has shaped my outlook in life. He has taught me how treat others with respect. I will remember his fond memories all my life.

~ Jiten Roy - July 25, 2017

I felt extremely sad hearing the news of Professor Tara Prasad Das’s demise. I was visiting my family in India from China where I am on sabbatical and it was raining heavily early in the morning morning in Ahmedabad, India when I heard this distressing news.

Though I have never met Prof. Das, I am proud to mention that I have immensely benefited from his research contributions. During my Ph.D. I worked on parity non-conservation (PNC) in atomic systems and this involved understanding the behavior of electron wave functions in the nuclear region of atomic systems and its vital role in determining atomic PNC amplitudes accurately. In this context, I came across Prof. Das’s many research works on hyperfine interactions where he had analyzed the behavior of different electron correlation effects and compared his results with experimental values. His papers were so informative and scholarly that I could grasp the underlying role of electron correlation effects for different states of atomic systems discussed using a perturbative analysis. Though I was using an all order perturbative method in the relativistic coupled-cluster (RCC) framework in my study, I could easily make the connection between these methods and was able to explain the RCC results in a manner similar to that used by Prof. Das in his diagrammatic approach. In fact, my first Rapid Communication paper in Phys. Rev. A was highly motivated by his research where I have cited his paper Phys. Rev. A 25, 2923 (1982). Later I have also cited his other works reported in Phys. Rev. A 52, 197 (1995); Phys. Rev. Lett. 49, 1800 (1982); Phys. Rev. Lett. 49, 1466 (1982), J. Phys. B 15, L379 (1982) etc., while trying to determine nuclear electric quadrupole and magnetic dipole moments of Sr and Fr atoms.

With deepest sympathy, my heartfelt condolences and thoughts to Prof Das’ family.


Bijaya Kumar Sahoo, Associate Professor, Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad-380058, Gujarat, India.

~ Bijaya Kumar Sahoo - July 25, 2017

Dr. Das was a giant, graduating more Ph.D.s than anyone in U.Albany physics. Although never taking a full class with him I had the privilege to hear his lectures as well as those of his former students who had gone on to become eminent physicists in their own right. For me, he also was greatly responsible for my passing my comprehensive exams. Yet his family were always the predominant subject of his postings on the walls outside his 1st floor office. Sincerely, Phil Erner MS Physics 2008

~ Phil Erner - July 25, 2017

Dear Mrs. Puspa Manjari Das,

I was deeply saddened and lost words by the very very sad news.

Professor Das was the greatest scientist and pioneer who taught importance of the first principles theoretical approach to understand the muon behavior in a matter.
The simulation originated by him and his group are nowadays the standard method in the world muon community.

He was also the most kind and respectful person.
I remember his urgent calls caring our safety at the two big earthquakes we had in Japan in 2011 and last year.

I am thinking of you at your most difficult time.
My most heartfelt condolences to you and whole family.

Eiko Torikai

~ Eiko Torikai - July 25, 2017

It is with deep sorrow for the passing of a dear friend and love for the family he leaves behind. As next door neighbors, we came to know each other quite well as we brought up our respective families for many years. He always treated everyone with great respect with a friendly attitude and always with a smile. He had such a gentle, calm nature and was always concerned for his students, whom he often welcomed into his home. The students were often far from home and he tried to make it easier for them in any way he could along with his sweet, welcoming wife, like surrogate parents. It has been our great pleasure to know this family and sadly share their loss.

The Knight Family

~ Helen Knight - July 24, 2017

My condolences to the Das family on the death of their husband, father, father-in-law, grandfather. I remember the smile that Prof. Das always had on his face when he would come into the Twenty Mall Fay's/Eckerd Drugstore to either pick up pictures or drop off film for developing. He was such a pleasant and courteous gentleman. I still have the small sculpture he surprised me with upon returning from one of his travels. The world would be a better place if there were more people like Prof. Das in it.

~ Pat Hans - July 24, 2017

I was overwhelmed with grief after getting the news that Professor Tara Prasad Das had passed away. I was in the middle of preparing my lectures for an international school on superheavy elements when I heard this very sad news. The conceptual foundation of these lectures is largely based on relativistic many-body theory, a topic which I learnt from Prof Das while I was his PhD student in the late 1970s.

Prof Das’ ability to lucidly explain complex physical phenomena was stupendous. I remember being awestruck by his exposition of the interplay of different many-body effects in hyperfine interactions in alkali atoms in one of our discussions when I was a graduate student. I immediately rushed to my room after talking to him and made notes on what I had learnt from him so that I would not forget it in the future. Indeed, many of my papers on hyperfine interactions in subsequent years and decades reflect the deep influence he had on my approach to this subject. I am proud to
say that one of my former students, Bijaya Sahoo is now widely considered to be one of the world’s
leaders in the theory of hyperfine interactions in atoms — he is a true inheritor of the tradition of analysing hyperfine interactions by rigorous many-body theory that had been set by Prof Das.

My last meeting with Prof Das was in February 2014 in Bangalore. It was as always a privilege for me to talk about new developments in physics with him. His passion for physics was still palpable even though he was above 80 and had officially retired from the University at Albany.

No tribute to Prof Das would be complete without mentioning his truly admirable human qualities. His deep concern and care for his students and all his co-workers clearly stood out. I shall always remember with profound gratitude his help and moral support to me at critical stages when I was his student at Albany.

My heartfelt condolences to Prof Das’ family

~ Bhanu Pratap Das - July 24, 2017

Professor Das was a friend, a mentor, and an inspiration. What he taught me about physics, family, and life I will carry with me always. Even in my sadness as I try to write this, all I can picture is his mischievous smile and the twinkle in his eye that he got when discussing politics or physics. In truth, it is hard to mourn someone who lived life so well. I thank God I had the chance to know him, our loss is heaven's gain.

~ Roger Pink - July 23, 2017

Our condolences and thoughts and prayers go out to the Das Family.
Mark & Shelly Wykes

~ Mark & Shelly Wykes - July 23, 2017

Remembering our time together during football games at Guilderland High School. Our thoughts and prayers are with the entire Das Family.

Todd De Bock and Family
Delores and the late Ron De Bock

~ Delores De Bock - July 23, 2017