Deepak Dhar, physicist, from the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Pune, has been selected for the Boltzmann medal, awarded by the Commission on Statistical Physics (C3) of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics. He becomes the first Indian to win this award, which was initiated in 1975, with Nobel laureate (1982) K.G. Wilson being the first recipient. He shares the platform with American scientist John J. Hopfield who is known for his invention of an associative neural network, now named after him. The award consists of the gilded Boltzmann medal with the inscription of Ludwig Boltzmann, and the chosen two scientists will be presented the medals at the StatPhys28 conference to be held in Tokyo, 7-11 August, 2023.
Prof. Dhar, who was formerly at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, has been chosen for this award for his seminal contributions in the field of statistical physics, including exact solutions of self-organised criticality models, interfacial growth, universal long-time relaxation in disordered magnetic systems, exact solutions in percolation and cluster counting problems and definition of spectral dimension of fractals, according to the website of the C3 Commission.
It is noteworthy that the last item, namely, the definition of the spectral dimension of fractals, relates to the work he did as a PhD student at California Institute of Technology, in the U.S. The award, in effect, marks out his lifetime’s achievement.
A magician
Prof Gautam Menon, who has worked with Prof. Dhar says on Twitter, “He was my post-doctoral mentor at TIFR. I can think of no-one who deserves this more.” He goes on to say that Mark Kac, who pioneered the development of mathematical probability and its application to statistical physics, once said, “There are two kinds of geniuses, the ‘ordinary’ and the ‘magicians’. An ordinary genius is the fellow that you and I would be just as good as, if we were only many times better… once we understand what they have done, we feel that we too could have done it. It is different with the magicians. Even after we understand what they have done, the process by which they have done it is completely mysterious.” Prof Menon says, then, “Deepak is a magician.”
The Statistical Physics community celebrated the occasion of Prof Dhar and Prof. Mustansir Barma, who is at TIFR, Hyderabad centre now, turning 70, recently. The members of this group number more than a hundred today, and the contribution of Prof. Dhar and Prof. Barma in building up this community by nurturing the talents with schools and mentorship, has been appreciated and noted by physicists. However, both scientists independently said that they had not done this consciously and were happy at the outcome.
Previous winners
The medal, which honours outstanding achievements in the field of statistical physics, has been given to one or two persons, once in three years, in the last 47 years. Previous winners include K.G. Wilson, R. Kubo, M.E. Fisher, R.J. Baxter, Kurt Binder, Giorgio Parisi, L. P. Kadanoff and other such names which to be found in the textbooks of statistical physics and many of whom have later won the Nobel prize. It is given only once to a person and on the condition that that person has not won the Nobel prize so far.
