T. V. Ramakrishnan Biography

Indian theoretical physicist (born 1941)

Tiruppattur Venkatachalamurti Ramakrishnan FRS (born 14 August 1941) is an Indian theoretical physicist known for his contributions in condensed matter physics. He is at present DAE Homi Bhabha Professor of Physics at Benaras Hindu University and also the chancellor of Tripura University.

Biography

Tiruppattur Venkatachalamurti Ramakrishnan was born on 14 August 1941 in Madras, Tamil Nadu. He completed his B.Sc (Hons.) and M.Sc in Physics from Banaras Hindu University in 1959 and 1961. He then worked as a CSIR research fellow at Banaras Hindu University from 1961 to 1962. He later completed his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1966.He started his professional career as lecturer in the Indian Ins*ute of Technology, Kanpur. He shifted to the Indian Ins*ute of Science, Bangalore in 1986 where he continued till 2003. He also served on the Physical Sciences jury for the Infosys Prize from 2010 to 2013.

Ramakrishnan has made seminal contributions to the scaling theory of electron localization. He has made contributions to the theory of liquid to solid transition and of mixed valence systems.

Awards and honours

He was awarded the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award in 1983, TWAS Prize in 1990 and the Padma Shri in 2001. In 1987 he was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society "for his contributions to the many-body theory of disordered systems, especially the scaling theory of localization and the theory of mixed-valent impurities"

Ramakrishnan was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2000. His certificate of election reads:

Professor Ramakrishnan has made crucial contributions to our understanding of condensed many body systems. His pioneering work started two major areas of activity. These are: the liquid-solid transition as well as related phenomena in dense cl*ical systems, and the onset of electron localization in disordered systems. He has also made many significant contributions to their growth. In a third area, namely mixed valence in rare-earth metals, his work on the inverse orbital degeneracy expansion has had a major effect on the field 

References

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