Ashoke Sen

Ashoke Sen অশোক সেন
Born	15 July 1956 (age 59) Kolkata, West Bengal, India
Residence	Kolkata, Allahabad
Nationality	Indian
Fields	Physics
Institutions	Fermilab Stanford Linear Accelerator Center Tata Institute of Fundamental Research Harish-Chandra Research Institute
Alma mater	Scottish Church Collegiate School Presidency College, Kolkata University of Calcutta IIT Kanpur Stony Brook University
Doctoral advisor	George Sterman
Known for	Contributions to string field theory
Notable awards	G.D. Birla Award for Scientific Research (1996) Padma Shri (2001) Infosys Prize - Mathematical Sciences (2009) Fundamental Physics Prize (2012) Padma Bhushan (2013) Dirac Medal (2014)

Ashoke Sen, FRS (Bengali: অশোক সেন; born 1956) is an Indian theoretical physicist and distinguished professor at the Harish-Chandra Research Institute, Allahabad.^[1] He also is the Morningstar Visiting professor at MIT and a distinguished professor at the Korea Institute for Advanced Study. His main area of work is String Theory. He was among the first recipients of the Fundamental Physics Prize “for opening the path to the realisation that all string theories are different limits of the same underlying theory”. This prize has been set up by the Russian billionaire Yuri Milner for rewarding scientific breakthroughs.

Contents

• 1 Early life
• 2 Career
• 3 Honors and awards
• 4 References
• 5 External links

Early life

He was born on 15 July 1956^[2] in Kolkata, and is the elder son of Anil Kumar Sen, a former professor of physics at the Scottish Church College, and Gouri Sen, a homemaker.^[3]
After completing his schooling from the Sailendra Sircar Vidyalaya and the Scottish Church Collegiate School in Kolkata, he earned his bachelor’s of science degree in 1975 from the Presidency College under the University of Calcutta, and his master’s three years later from the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur. During his undergraduate studies at Presidency, he was greatly inspired by the work and teaching of Amal Kumar Raychaudhuri. He did his doctoral work in physics at Stony Brook University.

Career

Ashoke Sen made a number of major original contributions to the subject of string theory, including his landmark paper on strong-weak coupling duality or S-duality,^[4] which was influential in changing the course of research in the field. He pioneered the study of unstable D-branes and made the famous Sen conjecture about open string tachyon condensation on such branes.^[5] His description of rolling tachyons^[6] has been influential in string cosmology. He has also co-authored many important papers on string field theory. In 1998 he won the fellowship of the Royal Society on being nominated by the theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking.^[1] His contributions include the entropy function formalism for extremal black holes and its applications to attractors. His current research interests are centered around the attractor mechanism and the precision counting of microstates of black holes. Recently he has joined National Institute of Science Education and Research (NISER) as an honorary fellow.^[7]

Honors and awards

• Dirac Medal in 2014 ^[8]
• Doctor of Literature (honorary), 2013, awarded by Jadavpur University.
• Doctor of Science (Honoris Causa), 2013, awarded by IIT Bombay ^[9]
• M.P. Birla Memorial Award in 2013
• Padma Bhushan in 2013 ^[10]
• Fundamental Physics Prize, 2012, for his work on string theory ^[11][12]
• Doctor of Science (Honoris Causa), 2009, awarded by IIT Kharagpur ^[13]
• Infosys Prize in the Mathematical Sciences, 2009 ^[14]
• Padma Shri in 2001
• Fellow of the Royal Society 1998 ^[1]
• Fellow of the Indian National Science Academy in 1996 ^[15]
• S.S. Bhatnagar award in 1994
• ICTP Prize in 1989 ^[16]

References

1. Pulakkat, Hari (Dec 19, 2013). "How many of us know about Breakthrough Prize winner, Ashoke Sen?". The Economic Times.
2. http://www.ias.ac.in/php/fell_detail.php3?name=Sen&intials=Ashoke&year=15-07-1956
3. Physicist with pillow power
4. Sen, Ashoke (1994). "Dyon - monopole bound states, selfdual harmonic forms on the multi - monopole moduli space, and SL(2,Z) invariance in string theory". Phys. Lett. B329: 217–221. arXiv:hep-th/9402032. Bibcode:1994PhLB..329..217S. doi:10.1016/0370-2693(94)90763-3.
5. Sen, Ashoke (1998). "Tachyon condensation on the brane antibrane system". JHEP 8: 012. arXiv:hep-th/9805170. Bibcode:1998JHEP...08..012S. doi:10.1088/1126-6708/1998/08/012.
6. Sen, Ashoke (2002). "Rolling Tachyon". JHEP 4: 048. arXiv:hep-th/0203211. Bibcode:2002JHEP...04..048S. doi:10.1088/1126-6708/2002/04/048.
7. http://physics.niser.ac.in/mem.php?ty=fc
8. "Dirac Medallists 2014".
9. [1]
10. "Rajesh Khanna, Sridevi, Mary Kom, Rahul Dravid on Padma list". Times of India. TNN. Jan 26, 2013.
11. New annual US$3 million Fundamental Physics Prize recognizes transformative advances in the field, FPP, accessed 1 August 2012
12. "Indian scientist Ashoke Sen bags top physics honour". The Times Of India. 2012-08-02.
13. http://www.iitkgp.ac.in/institute/index.php?page=honors
14. Infosys Prize 2009 Mathematical Sciences
15. The Year Book 2014 // Indian National Science Academy, New Delhi
16. "ICTP Prize Winner 1989". Retrieved 2009-11-17.

• Thomson Honours Leading Indian Scientists Five people receive the "Thomson Citation Laureate Award", including physics professor Ashoke Sen of the Harish-Chandra Research Institute.
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