With a humble background in the farming community of Punjab (India), I completed my graduation in Mechanical Engineering from Punjab University in 1964. Immediately thereafter I joined Indian Air Force in the Aeronautical Engineering (Mechanical) branch and underwent a rigorous one year training course at Air Force Technical College Bangalore in 1965. After a short stint at an operational air base, I was detailed for a short missile training course and then posted to an operational surface to air missile squadron in 1967. It was during my this tenure in a missile squadron (where, as a bachelor I had plenty of spare time) that I developed a special interest in the study of physics..
It started with a sort of implied faith or firm belief that Physics, as the queen mother of all sciences, is capable of logically explaining all natural phenomenon. Hence to satisfy my inner urge to understand Nature, I adopted the study of physics as a sort of hobby that turned into a fad in due course. For indepth understanding of physics, I had to undertake the study of higher mathematics in parallel. Thus the study of physics and mathematics, for developing a fundamental level understanding of the natural phenomena and hence Nature, became a life long quest, a passion for me.
But even after years of relentless study and reflection, I was still unable to get any grasp of the workings of Nature at fundamental level. My implied faith in Physics, as the queen mother of all sciences, began to shatter. It was quite distressing to find out that all the study of physics and mathematics could not help me visualize the shape, size or structure of elementary particles like electron, photon or proton, neutron etc. Thereafter I started probing the inadequacies or deficiencies of the current fundamental Physics.
In 1971, I was selected for undergoing a long (1½ years) technical staff course at Institute of Armament Technology, Pune (India). I topped in this course and won the running trophy for excellence. One subject which I liked most in this course was that of control engineering. After a short stint at another operational air base, I was again selected in 1973 for a post graduation course in UK. I obtained my M.Sc. degree in the faculty of technology from the (then) Cranfield Institute of Technology (UK) with excellent academic performance. It was during this course that I first used computer aided mathematical modeling to solve practical problems. Later on I used this technique extensively during my 19 years of service tenure with Defence Research and Development Organisation. During this time I managed to sustain my interest in the unique hobby of study, investigation and research in fundamental physics.
However, I finally realized the futility of pursuing the serious issue of fundamental research in physics by merely treating it as a hobby or a fad. I took pre-mature retirement from service in 1993 and decided to devote full time on this pursuit of fundamental research project in Physics. I devoted next five years to this project with full concentration, just like meditation. Final outcome of this relentless effort was a new fundamental theory of space-time distortions as origin of elementary particles. I christened this theory as "Elastic Continuum Theory", posted it on the website and attempted to get it published in the mainstream journals but in vain.
I thought that perhaps this work is much ahead of its time!!
Last year one of my well wishers, advised me to put together all of my articles and re-structure them into a text book. Accordingly I have just completed the compilation of this book titled <b> "Fundamental Nature of Matter and Fields".
G. S Sandhu
gurcharn_sandhu@yahoo.com