IISER’s Prof. Deepak Dhar becomes first Indian to be awarded with Boltzmann Medal.

Why in news?

• The renowned Indian physicist and Emeritus Professor at the Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Pune, Prof Deepak Dhar will be conferred the prestigious Boltzmann Medal 2022 for contribution in the field of statistical physics.
• He became the first Indian to be awarded the Boltzmann Medal. He will share the medal with John J Hopfield of Princeton University.
• The medal presentation ceremony will be held during the StatPhys28 conference in August 2022 in Tokyo, Japan.

About the prize

• The Boltzmann Medal (or Boltzmann Award) is named after the physicist Ludwig Boltzmann and awarded to physicists for contributing new results in statistical mechanics and it was instituted in 1975.
• The Boltzmann Medal is given every three years by the C3 Commission on Statistical Physics of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP).
• John J Hopfield is an American scientist, who is known for his invention of an associative neural network in 1982

About Prof Deepak Dhar:

• He is known for his research on statistical physics and stochastic processes.
• He is an elected fellow of – the Indian Academy of Sciences, the Indian National Science Academy, and the National Academy of Sciences and also The World Academy of Sciences.
• Award – ‘Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize’ (1991) by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR).