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. ...