Prof. Ashoke Sen

Prof. Ashoke Sen Wins the 2026 Oskar Klein Medal

Indian theoretical physicist Professor Ashoke Sen has won the prestigious 2026 Oskar Klein Medal, becoming the first Indian physicist to ever receive this honor. Past winners include renowned Nobel Prize laureates such as Chen-Ning Yang, Steven Weinberg, and Hans Bethe. Born in Kolkata in 1956, Sen grew up in an academic family where his father was a physics professor. He studied physics at Presidency College in Kolkata and earned his Master’s degree from IIT Kanpur before moving to the United States to complete his Ph.D. and work at major research facilities. ...

October 24, 2026 · 1 min

From Pratapgarh to the 2026 Dirac Medal: What Prof. Deepak Dhar’s Triumph Teaches Indian Academia

In August 2026, the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) in Trieste, Italy, announced the recipients of the 2026 Dirac Medal—one of the highest global honours in theoretical physics. Alongside international stalwarts Bernard Derrida, Marc Mézard, and Haim Sompolinsky stood Prof. Deepak Dhar, an INSA Distinguished Professor at ICTS-TIFR, Bengaluru. Following his 2022 Boltzmann Medal (where he became the first Indian recipient in history) and the 2023 Padma Bhushan, this latest recognition places Prof. Dhar into an extraordinary global club: he is one of only ten physicists in the world to have won both the Boltzmann Medal and the Dirac Medal, and only the second scientist working in India to claim the Dirac honour after Ashoke Sen. ...

October 16, 2026 · 5 min