Before H.C. Verma wrote Concepts of Physics, Indian JEE aspirants were struggling with one huge problem; the IIT Kanpur professor changed that

For millions of Indian students, cracking JEE begins with two words on a book cover: Concepts of Physics. For many, finishing both volumes is less a study strategy and more a rite of passage, something you do before you can call yourself serious about engineering.

But very few know why the book exists at all. Or what problem it was actually written to solve.

The book that was not written for Indian students


In 1980, a young physics lecturer named Harish Chandra Verma walked into a classroom at Patna Science College and opened the Resnick and Halliday textbook.

It is, by any measure, a brilliant book. Internationally acclaimed, scientifically rigorous, and widely used across universities around the world. Verma admired it. He used it every day.

But something kept bothering him.

His students were not struggling because they lacked intelligence. They were struggling because the book had not been written for them. Its examples, its language, its assumptions about the reader's context, all of it reflected a classroom environment very different from what a student from a small town in Bihar or Uttar Pradesh had grown up in.

The problem was not physics. The problem was communication.

Verma spent years watching where students got stuck, what misconceptions they arrived with, and what kinds of explanations actually landed. He was not just teaching. He was quietly building a blueprint.

Building it from scratch

Born on 3 April 1952 in Darbhanga, Bihar, Verma came from a family where education was central. His father was a school teacher. He completed his B.Sc. from Patna Science College and went on to earn his M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Physics from IIT Kanpur, before returning to Patna to teach.

After more than a decade in the classroom, he did not adapt Resnick and Halliday. He did not translate it. He built something entirely new.

Concepts of Physics was first published in 1992. What made it different was not just simpler language, though the language was simpler. It was the philosophy behind it.

Where many textbooks led with formulas, Verma led with questions. He wanted students to ask why before they learned how. Real-life examples, carefully constructed illustrations, and problems designed to test understanding rather than reward memorisation, all of it reflected years of watching exactly where Indian students needed a different kind of help.

Within a few years, the book had become one of the most recommended texts for JEE aspirants. Eventually it spread to NEET preparation, Olympiad training, and engineering undergraduate courses. Today, decades later, coaching institutes across the country still put it at the top of their reading lists.

From Patna to IIT Kanpur

In 1994, Verma joined IIT Kanpur as a faculty member, where he spent more than two decades teaching and researching experimental nuclear physics. He published 139 research papers over his career.

But even inside one of India's most prestigious institutions, he never drifted far from his original concern, which was making physics work for ordinary students. Lectures, demonstrations, and classroom sessions he recorded at IIT Kanpur continue to circulate freely online, reaching students who have never set foot near the campus.

This is worth noting in context. At a time when quality physics instruction was concentrated in a handful of coaching hubs like Kota, Verma was quietly making the same content available to anyone with a screen. Long before edtech became an industry, he was doing it without calling it anything.

Six hundred experiments, a national network

Verma also believed that physics should not require expensive equipment to feel real.

Over the years, he developed more than 600 low-cost experiments using everyday materials, demonstrations that any teacher in any school could replicate without a well-funded laboratory. In 2011, building on this work, he helped establish the National Anveshika Network of India under the Indian Association of Physics Teachers, an initiative that now supports hands-on science learning across the country.

It is a quieter part of his legacy but in some ways a more ambitious one. The book reached students. This network was designed to reach teachers.

After retirement

Verma retired from IIT Kanpur in 2017 but did not step away from education. He turned more of his attention to Shiksha Sopan, an initiative he co-founded near the IIT Kanpur campus that supports children from economically weaker families with academic help, mentoring, and learning opportunities.

In 2021, the Government of India awarded him the Padma Shri for his contribution to physics education.

It was a formal recognition of something that lakhs of students had already known for years. That HCV is not just a name on a cover. For many, it marks the moment when a subject that felt impossible finally began to make sense.

He did not just teach equations. He taught a generation of Indian students how to think about physics.

And that, more than any award or citation, is likely what will last.

(Disclaimer: This article is based on publicly available information about Dr. Harish Chandra Verma, including details of his academic career, published works, interviews, and official recognitions, accessed by The Times of India. It is intended for educational and informational purposes.)