Prof. Deepak Dhar, Distinguished Visiting Professor and NASI-Senior Scientist in the Physics department at IISER Pune, has been selected to receive the prestigious Boltzmann Medal for 2022. He is one of the two physicists selected for the award; the second awardee was Prof. John Hopfield from Princeton University.
The Boltzmann Medal is instituted by the C3 Commission on Statistical Physics of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP). The award is given out once in 3 years and honours outstanding achievements in statistical physics. The award will be presented during the Statphys28 Conference to be held in Tokyo, Japan, during August 2023.
Read here the announcement on the 2022 Medal awardees on IUPAP webpage.
An alumnus of University of Allahabad and IIT Kanpur, Prof. Deepak Dhar's tryst with research in statistical physics and stochastic processes goes back a long way beginning with his PhD in 1978 at the California Institute of Technology. Over the next four decades, at the Tata Institute for Fundamental Research in Mumbai, Prof. Dhar took on several areas of statistical physics to understand the behaviour of self-organised critical systems, explain the dynamics at phase interfaces, and define the spectral dimension of fractals. Prof. Dhar has been at IISER Pune since 2016 and is working on phase transitions and lattice models.
IISER Pune Director Prof. Jayant Udgaonkar and Dean Faculty Prof. Pinaki Talukdar felicitated Prof. Dhar today at a gathering of institute members in front of the Lecture Hall Complex on the institute campus. "Prof. Deepak Dhar is a scholar in the true sense, and his achievements speak for themselves. It's great that his achievements have been recognised," said Prof. Udgaonkar narrating his own experiences collaborating with Prof. Dhar over the years.
Speaking at the event, Prof. Dhar expressed gratitude to the many colleagues, institutions, family and friends for their support and encouragement over the years making research possible. Referring to a quote by Newton, Prof. Dhar said, "Scientists are like children playing on the sea shore. They look for pebbles and for nice sea shells. Some of them manage to find better sea shells than others. And that is how I feel. Maybe I was lucky to have found some nice problems to work on in my research", he said, with an unmistakable humility, to a spontaneous applause from the gathering.
Prof. Dhar is a Fellow of all three major science academies in India, is a Bhatnagar awardee and a TWAS Fellow, to name a few of his awards and recognitions. He will now be the first Indian to be awarded the Boltzmann Medal.
Our congratulations and best wishes to Prof. Deepak Dhar on this special occasion!
