PATIALA: Renowned physicist, veteran educationist, and celebrated popular science writer Dr Vidwan Singh Soni passed away on Friday at the age of 83 following health-related ailments. Survived by two daughters and a son, the former Principal of Government Mohindra College, Patiala, and Government College, Ropar, brought over three decades of academic excellence to higher education in Punjab. Apart from his extensive work in physics and the Special Theory of Relativity, Dr Soni gained widespread recognition for his pioneering fossil research and his dedicated efforts to make scientific literature accessible in the Punjabi language.
Throughout his career, Dr Soni blended academic rigor with field exploration, conducting extensive searches for fossils and Stone Age tools across the Shivalik sub-Himalayan region. His extensive collections featured rare animal fossils alongside prehistoric stone tools, including two remarkable pairs of ancient elephant tusks measuring 12 feet and seven feet in length. Collaborating with his son, Dr Anujot Singh Soni, he documented pitted cobbles and edge-ground stone tools from the Soanian regime, eventually helping Punjabi University establish a fossil museum to foster public engagement with prehistoric history.
In addition to authoring widely used physics textbooks like Mechanics and Relativity, Dr Soni worked towards bridging the gap between complex science and the general public. He authored the Punjabi science book “Dilchasap Kahani Dharti Amber Di” in 2023 and actively participated in translation initiatives to simplify technical concepts into regional languages. Scholars across the state maintained that Dr Soni’s death marks the loss of a rare intellect who seamlessly navigated between the worlds of theoretical physics and field paleontology.
