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.
