Deepak Dhar first Indian to get Boltzmann medal

PUNE: Deepak Dhar, professor emeritus for physics at Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Pune has become the first Indian to receive the coveted Boltzmann medal for 2022. The medal is presented by the C3 Commission on Statistical Physics of the International Union for Pure and Applied Physics every three years at the Statphys Conference. He shares the award that carries a gold medal with John J. Hopfield from the US.Dhar completed his BSc from Allahabad University, MSc in IIT Kanpur, and his Ph.D from California Institute of Technology. “Here, I had the fortune of working as a teaching assistant to (Nobel laureate theoretical physicist) Richard Feynman,” Dhar said on Friday. From 1978-2016, he was at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, and has been at IISER Pune since November 2016. Dhar is an elected fellow of Indian Academy of Sciences, Indian National Science Academy and National Academy of Sciences, India, and the World Academy of Sciences and also a recipient of Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for science and technology. IUPAP’s homepage says that Dhar is being conferred with the award ‘for his seminal contributions to several areas of statistical physics, including exact solutions of self-organized criticality models, interfacial growth, universal long-time relaxation in disordered magnetic systems, exact solutions in percolation and cluster counting problems and definition of the spectral dimension of fractals.’ Dhar has an unassuming air of a lovable science teacher.“The awards were never a driving force, but it is nice to have them,” he said, adding that India has eminent scientists like SN Bose, but the awards were instituted after their time. Quoting Isaac Newton, Dhar said, “I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”Dhar said that much work still needs to be done to improve school education in the country. “We are short-changing the younger generation with low quality education,” he said.