Prof. Mohini Mullick and the course on Modal Logic

Yesterday, we had a get together of 1992 Mechanical Engineering graduates of Punjab Engineering College. While sipping tea in the lawns of Director's residence, one of the alums, Akshay Sahni, asked me if Prof. Mohini Mullick taught me when I was a student at IITK. She is her aunt. And that caused me to recollect and write these memories. IIT Kanpur had a strong focus on education and barring a couple of courses, I enjoyed every bit of my time there both inside and outside the classroom.

I registered for two courses with her. The second course was titled, "Modal Logic" and it was a wonderful course that I believe has prepared me well for the life. At the end of the course, she asked us to write a term paper, which could have a proof of any theorem/corollary, or whatever else. Frankly, I didn't understand what was expected in that term paper, and I was too shy of meeting any faculty in those days. So I wasn't going to meet her and ask. None of my friends in the hostel wing were doing this course, so no help from them either. So I went to the Central Library (now known as P K Kelkar Library) and started reading research articles on allied topics.

It turned out that just a one semester course hadn't prepared me to understand much of current research in the area. So I went back, and started reading journals which were several decades old and some of the papers I could understand. I must have spent a few days in library, read scores of articles. But I couldn't just copy any article as my term paper. It ought to be believable that a student of the first course of Modal Logic could potentially think of that. So I kept reading, till I came across this article where the author had proven a theorem and it seemed like a pretty simple theorem that someone like me could potentially think of while doing the course. So I thought of a trivial corollary to the main theorem, built a proof in no time, and submitted the paper.

I had mixed feelings about it. I had perhaps read more papers and knew more, learnt more, than anyone else in the class. So, if the goal of that term paper was to make students learn on their own, the instructor had succeeded brilliantly. But if the goal of the term paper was to make students do something original, it was really trivial. And unlike these days, we weren't taught about giving citations to the papers that we referred to. So I had no mention of the original paper in my term-paper.

A few days later, Prof. Mullick returned everyone's term papers, with feedback. She asked me to meet her in her office after the class. I went to her office thinking that she must have realized that I have done it after reading that paper. But she was very nice to me. She congratulated me for a good term paper and told me to look up a paper in this Journal of Philosophy (don't remember the name) by such and such author in the June, 1900 issue (Don't remember the date, but it was almost 90 years earlier).

How does she know of research done a century earlier. That was her scholarship. I am totally convinced that she knew that my term paper was a trivial derivation of that paper, and more importantly, I had done that trivial derivation after reading that paper. But she chose not to point that out. That was her way of encouraging students.

I am so glad that IIT Kanpur decided to make her an Institute Fellow last month. IIT Kanpur became great because of people like Prof. Mohini Mullick.