Global Honour for Indian Scientist

• 02 Aug 2019

Atish Dabholkar, a theoretical physicist from India, known for his research on string theory and quantum black holes, has been appointed as the next director of the Italy-based International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP).

• Dabhokar will succeed Fernando Quevedo from November 2019.
• He is the second Indian appointed to the post in ICTP history after Katepalli Sreenivasan, who was Quevedo’s predecessor.
• Dabholkar is currently the head of the High Energy, Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics section of ICTP based in Trieste, north-east Italy.
• He is also the winner of the 2006 Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award for Science and Technology.
• He completed his school education in Kolhapur district of Maharashtra and did his graduation from IIT, Kanpur, and earned a PhD in theoretical physics from Princeton University.
• Until 2010, he was a professor of theoretical physics at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai, and has been a visiting professor at Stanford University and a visiting scientist at CERN.

International Centre for Theoretical Physics

• International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) was founded in 1964 by the late Nobel Laureate Abdus Salam.
• Its mandate is to provide education and skills to scientists from developing countries for their productive careers.
• It has helped in stemming the scientific brain drain from the developing world.

String Theory

• It is an attempt to combine the quantum mechanics (body of scientific laws that describe the behavior of photons, electrons and other particles that make up the universe) and Albert Einstein's theory of relativity — with an overarching framework that can explain all of physical reality.
• It tries to do so by positing that particles are actually one-dimensional, string-like entities whose vibrations determine the particles' properties, such as their mass and charge.

European Organization for Nuclear Research

• European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) is the European Organization founded in 1954 for Nuclear Research.
• It aims to provide a unique range of particle accelerator facilities that enable world-class research in fundamental physics.
• It operates the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator i.e Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

Theoretical Physics

• It is the development of mathematical formalisms and computational protocols for describing all aspects of objects found in the world around us and their interaction.
• This can involve both providing models for understanding empirical results or constructing self-logical theories for explaining phenomena beyond current experiments.

Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award

• The award is named after the founder Director of the Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR) India, the late Dr (Sir) Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar and is known as the ‘Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar (SSB) Prize for Science and Technology’.
• The Prize is given each year for outstanding contributions to science and technology.

Source: TH