An Indian physicist, who won the Fundamental Physics Prize of $ 3 Million

In spite of being a legend in his field, Ashoke Sen is someone who is rarely known by Indians. These are a few of his mind-boggling achievements.

1. After completing his schooling from the Sailendra Sircar Vidyalaya in Kolkata, he earned his bachelor of science degree in 1975 from the Presidency College under the University of Calcutta, and his master’s three years later from the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur. He did his doctoral work in physics at Stony Brook University.
2. He subsequently became one of the world’s pioneering researchers in String Theory and his 1994 paper “Dyon – monopole bound states, selfdual harmonic forms on the multi – monopole moduli space, and SL(2,Z) invariance in string theory” changed the course of research in the subject.
3. In 1998, he was declared Fellow of the Royal Society. His nomination was supported by the legendary physicist Stephen Hawking.
4. In 2012, he won the Fundamental Physics Prize, one of the most lucrative prizes in the modern world now. The prize money is almost double that of the Nobel Prize.
5. 2001 Padma Shri awardee. The Padma Shri is the 4th highest Indian civilian honor, after the Bharat Ratna, Padma Vibhushan and Padma Bhushan.
6. 2014 winner of the Dirac Medal of the ICTP awarded by the “The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics”, based in Trieste, Italy. He shared the award with Andrew Strominger and Gabriele Veneziano, two other living string theory pioneers.
7. Honorary degrees awarded by Jadavpur University, IIT Bombay and IIT Kharagpur.

A true legend everyone should know of!