ICTP Prize Winners 2019

The 2019 ICTP Prize in honour of Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar has been awarded to Dr. Basudeb Dasgupta, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, India and Dr. Suvrat Raju, International Centre for Theoretical Sciences, TIFR, Shivakote, Bengaluru, India.

The prize recognises Professor Basudeb Dasgupta (India) for innovative theoretical contributions to neutrino and dark-matter physics, especially to the understanding of collective neutrino oscillations. Dasgupta pioneered the field of collective neutrino flavor evolution in extreme astrophysical environments, such as those in supernovae, which helped the understanding of these spectacular and phenomenologically rich events. His works on dark matter, the dominant but yet unidentified component of matter in the Universe, produced crucial input for the interpretation of ongoing direct search experiments. His new ideas on the subject improved our understanding of the possible nature and properties of this obscure form of matter.

The prize recognises Professor Suvrat Raju (India) for new insights into the holographic description of black-hole interiors, for clarifying the nature of subtle non-local effects in quantum gravity, and for contributions to the study of the AdS/CFT correspondence. His works on black holes provided a deeper and more detailed description of how the intrinsic non-locality of gravity could preserve unitarity during the black-hole evaporation process, shedding new light on the long-standing black-hole information paradox. He also helped to develop a new set of tools and concepts that extend to conformal field theories, holographic correspondence, quantum error corrections, and algebraic quantum field theory.

Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, born on 19 October 1910 in Lahore, Punjab, British India, is one of the most renowned and prolific Indian scientists. He worked on a great variety of subjects, making groundbreaking discoveries in different fields. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics on 1983 for "theoretical studies of the physical processes of importance to the structure and evolution of the stars". He died on 21 August 1995.