ABSTRACT
The first significant images from a scanning tunneling microscope (STM) anywhere had been reported in late 1981 but it was not until 1986 that the instrument and its makers, Heinrich Roehrer and Gerd Binning of the IBM Research Laboratory, Zurich, Switzerland, gained acceptance and popularity. The year 1986 also saw the beginning of C. Dharmadhikari’s STM journey, not because of the Nobel Prize as one might be tempted to believe, but something more complex and serendipitous. In 2005, Richard Colton was even requested by the Assistant Registrar of the University of Pune for an assessment and evaluation of Dharmadhikari’s work. Colton not only responded positively, he even recommended that Dharmadhikari be granted professorship. Dharmadhikari was awarded the 1980 Welch Foundation Award by the International Union for Vacuum Science Techniques & Application, and, in 1984, he even co-authored a paper with Robert Gomer that was published in the journal Surface Science.
