{"id":586,"date":"2012-08-02T07:29:05","date_gmt":"2012-08-02T07:29:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/indigenus\/?p=586"},"modified":"2012-08-02T07:29:05","modified_gmt":"2012-08-02T07:29:05","slug":"physics-award","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/indigenus\/2012\/08\/physics-award.html","title":{"rendered":"Physics award"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 2008, while Nature India<\/em> was\u00a0analysing<\/a> the contribution of the eastern part of India to basic and applied science in this country, a name came up pretty regularly during interviews with scientists from the region. The name was that of Ashoke Sen<\/a>. The physicist, an alumnus of east India’s Oxford — Presidency College — does not live or work in the east. In fact, his workplace for long years has been up north at the Harish Chandra Institute in Allahabad. But almost everyone in West Bengal talks of him reverentially. He was the scientist with the highest number of publications in this country. And one sticking on to the ‘string theory’ to unravel newer facets of it with every publication.<\/p>\n

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Ashoke Sen{credit}Infosys foundation{\/credit}<\/p><\/div>\n

This week, the east was celebrating as much as the north of India. The reason: Ashoke Sen was awarded the maiden Fundamental Physics Prize\u00a0<\/a>\u00a0instituted by Russian billionaire entrepreneur Yuri Borisovich\u00a0Milner. Sen has been picked up by Milner’s not-for-profit foundation for ‘uncovering striking evidence of strong-weak duality in certain supersymmetric string theories and gauge theories’, opening the path to the realization that all string theories are different limits of the same underlying theory.<\/p>\n

The Indian scientist has received a prize money of three million US dollars — almost thrice the amount that a Nobel prize winner gets. He is with eight such awardees (seven from America and one from France) on \u00a0in the inaugural edition of the prize list.<\/p>\n

It is a glory for physics — traditionally a stronghold for science in India — as also for basic science research.<\/p>\n

Sen has has shown characteristic equanimity after he heard of the award. Though some report<\/a>s suggest the prize money did create some excitement in the family. After all, it was equal to both the Nobel prize and Templeton prize put together — the\u00a0most lucrative academic prize in the world.<\/p>\n

Congratulations to Ashoke Sen and more strength to string theory!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 2008, while Nature India was\u00a0analysing the contribution of the eastern part of India to basic and applied science in this country, a name came up pretty regularly during interviews with scientists from the region. The name was that of Ashoke Sen. The physicist, an alumnus of east India\u2019s Oxford \u2014 Presidency College \u2014 does not live or work in the east. In fact, his workplace for long years has been up north at the Harish Chandra Institute in Allahabad. But almost everyone in West Bengal talks of him reverentially. He was the scientist with the highest number of publications in this country. And one sticking on to the \u2018string theory\u2019 to unravel newer facets of it with every publication.  Read more<\/a> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":105,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,21,12],"tags":[89,90],"class_list":["post-586","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academics","category-award","category-sciences","tag-ashoke-sen","tag-fpp"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/indigenus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/indigenus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/indigenus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/indigenus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/105"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/indigenus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=586"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/indigenus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/indigenus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/indigenus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/indigenus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}