India, July 6 -- Would you believe that Jyotisha, the ancient Vedic system of astrology, has been scientifically validated? The story of the scientific work done in Bangalore by Dr Rameshrao N, a Jyotishi (Vedic astrologer) with four decades of experience in assessing birth charts is extraordinary. A very senior academic from Pune who visited him opined that it was the best PhD work that he had ever seen; it was of such quality and originality as to be worthy of a Nobel Prize.

I was first introduced to Jyotisha in 1988 and was deeply impressed by its accuracy in predicting events that would happen to a person, and their timing. At a meeting with a friend in the US in 2004, I said that I would really like to be able to conduct research on...