Datta, as he was commonly called, came to Sweden in the 1950s after university studies in Bombay and Cambridge. He began his career as a geophysicist at AB Elektriks Malmletning in Stockholm. There he met his future wife, Helena Nyström from Finland. In 1960, they moved to Boliden, where he was employed as a research physicist.
Datta continued his university studies, now in Uppsala, where he became a leading teacher and researcher in solid earth physics. With his studies in geoelectrical methods, he came to further develop a strong Swedish prospecting technical research tradition, which resulted in a large number of scientific publications.
It was therefore unsurprising that in 1974 he was called to a professorship in prospecting geophysics at Luleå Institute of Technology and thus contributed to its mining profile. Datta was elected in 1976 to the Royal Academy of Engineering Sciences (IVA).
Besides many journal articles, Datta wrote several books. He had great success with Principles of Applied Geophysics, which was updated and printed in several editions and used as a textbook in many countries. Datta was widely known, but you still couldn’t help but be surprised when, for example, in the jungles of Central America you met geoscientists who knew him well.
Datta was heavily involved in skills building at universities in developing countries and contributed to the establishment of geophysical departments. He supervised many PhD students. They were often given a great deal of freedom in their research, something that contributed to them gaining a strong independence for the benefit of their careers.
Dattatray Parasnis had a strong scientific position with his successful research, was rewarded with a number of awards and was a very good ambassador for Luleå University of Technology. Many of us miss him.
Professor Emeritus Dattatray Parasnis, Luleå, passed away on 16 June 2023 at the age of 96. Next of kin are his children Irawati, Ravindra and Amalendu with their families.
Sten-Åke Elming, Eric Forssberg, Lennart Elfgren and Thorkild Maack Rasmussen, Luleå University of Technology, Sweden
Originally Published by Lulea University of Technology, Sweden 19 July 2023 https://www.ltu.se/org/sbn/Minnesord-Professor-emeritus-Dattatray-Parasnis-1.231289?l=en)
Further reflections from Ted Tyne
The passing of Professor D S Parasnis, an icon of applied geophysics developments in the Swedish exploration industry and at Luleå University of Technology, is a reminder of Sweden’s leadership together with Canada and the US in the early development of geophysical exploration methods in Scandinavia and the Americas.
Professor Parasnis was widely recognised for his influence on developments in Swedish applied geophysics as well as his teaching and leading research publications on potential field and electrical and electromagnetic methods. Indeed, this recognition extended to practising Australian geophysicists from the 1960s and over the early decades of the ASEG. His seminal early textbook Principles of Applied Geophysics updated and republished in four editions from 1962 to 1986, was used as a primary reference textbook in Australian university undergraduate courses in geophysics and exploration geoscience over this period.
In my postgraduate years in the early 1970s at the University of NSW, School of Applied Geology, under Assoc. Professor Laric Hawkins, Dr Bob Whiteley and Dr Ifti Qureshi, D. S. Parasnis’ principles and practices in electrical and electromagnetic geophysics were an important foundation in the many case-history electrical geophysical survey articles published in Geophysical Case Study of the Woodlawn Orebody, NSW Australia, Ed. R. J. Whiteley, Pergamon Press 1981, and in The Geophysics of the Elura Orebody, Ed. D. W. Emerson, ASEG Bulletin Vol 11, No.4.
Professor Parasnis was also a friend and colleague of Dr Ifti Qureshi, from their postgraduate years in the United Kingdom and that friendship and their exchanges contributed to the teaching of geophysics at UNSW. It was through this link that I was introduced to Professor Parasnis who was appointed as an external examiner of my own PhD Thesis in 1987. It was indeed a privilege to receive valuable guidance, suggestions and generous commendations from Professor Parasnis on my own exploration geophysics research.
Condolences from the ASEG to the family of Professor Parasnis and to his many friends and colleagues.
Ted Tyne