Category Famous Personalities

What do we know about Dr. Abhijit Mukherjee?

Dr. Abhijit Mukherjee, a professor of Geology from IIT- Kharagpur features among the top 100 influential people of 2020 by Time magazine. He is famous worldwide for his research in the field of groundwater exploration.

His team introduced a prediction model based on Artificial Intelligence for detecting arsenic in groundwater in the Gangetic delta. This feat was noted by the Jal Jeevan Mission.

A groundwater-surface water interaction is yet another one of his specializations. This work supplied important data regarding drinking water and food security to the Indian government. Dr. Abhijit Mukherjee has done ample researches on groundwater quantity and scarcity by understanding groundwater storage changes over the Indian subcontinent. This was achieved with advanced computation and Artificial Intelligence techniques.

Another significant role of Dr. Mukherjee is as head of one of South Asia’s first Urban Geo-science projects in Varanasi. He has won the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for 2020 in the field of Earth, Atmosphere, Ocean and Planetary Sciences.

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Who is Dr. Anil Bhardwaj?

Dr. Anil Bhardwaj has made significant contributions as an astrophysicist. He serves as the Director of the Physical Research Laboratory in Ahmedabad, which is a unit of the Department of Space, of the Government of India.

Dr. Anil Bhardwaj received his M.Sc from Lucknow University and PhD from the Indian Institute of Technology (BHU) Varanasi. He joined ISRO as a scientist at the Space Physics Laboratory (SPL) of the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC) in Trivandrum. He rose to become the Director of SPL.

SPL’s research in planetary science was initiated by Dr. Bhardwaj, and he contributed greatly in developing planetary science programs in ISRO. He acted as the Principal Investigator (PI) of the SARA (Sub-keV Atom Reflecting Analyzer) experiment on Chandrayaan-1, India’s first Lunar mission. The new findings changed our understanding on the interaction of solar wind with the Moon.

He has played a key role in many space missions of ISRO. He got the ISRO Team Achievement Award for Chandrayaan-1. He has also won the most coveted Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize (2007) and the Infosys Prize in Physical Sciences (2016).

Dr. Bhardwaj was the editor- in-chief of Advances in Geosciences for seven years, and was among the editors of the European journal Planetary and Space Science, the Bulletin of Astronomical Society of India and Current Science, a journal published by Current Science Association and Indian Academy of Sciences.

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Did Saket Saurabh win the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize?

Yes. Saket Saurabh did win the said prize in Mathematical Sciences in 2021. He is the Professor of Theoretical Computer Science at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences (IMSc), Chennai and an adjunct faculty at University of Bergen, Norway. He specializes in parameterized complexity, exponential algorithm, graph theory and algorithmic game theory which are different fields of computation.

We’ve seen what algorithms are. Hard algorithmic problems are dealt with in parameterized complexity. Exponential algorithm is used to sort infinite range. Graph theory deals with the study of graphs. Algorithmic game theory combines algorithmic thinking with theoretical ideas.

Saurabh got BSc (Honours) in Mathematics and MSc in Computer Science from Chennai Mathematical Institute. He did his PhD in Theoretical Computer Science from Indian Institute of Mathematical Science (IMSc) and became a faculty member later.

He had worked as a research assistant at the University of Bergen and also did post-doctoral studies there. He received a European Research Council Grant twice, and is a recipient of the 2020 ACM India Early Career Researcher Award. He was elected as a Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences in 2020. He has also co-authored two books- Parameterized Algorithms and Kernelization: Theory of Parameterized Preprocessing.

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Why is Dr. Jagadish Shukla famous?

Dr. Jagadish Shukla was born in a small village, Mirdha, in Uttar Pradesh. The village had no electricity, not even proper roads. The primary school did not have a building, and Jagadish Shukla had his early classes under a large banyan tree! He could not study science in high school because the schools did not include it.

He went to Banaras Hindu University (BHU) and graduated in Physics, Mathematics and Geology. He did MS in Geophysics and then finished his PhD too. Later he got a ScD (Doctor of Science) in Meteorology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

He chose a career in the atmospheric sciences and became a professor at George Mason University in the U.S.

Dr. Shukla’s study areas include the Asian monsoon dynamics, deforestation and desertification. Do you know what is desertification? It is when the soil loses its quality due to weather or human activity.

Dr. Shukla helped establish weather and climate research centres in India. He also established research institutions in Brazil and the U.S. He has been with the World Climate Research Programme since its start and founded the Centre for Ocean- Land-Atmosphere Studies, Virginia, U.S.

He has also established the Gandhi College in his village for educating rural students, especially women, and was awarded Padma Shri in 2012.

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What are the achievements of Ritabrata Munshi?

Ritabrata Munshi is a mathematician specialising in number theory. He is affiliated to the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, and the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata.

Number theory is a branch of mathematics that studies properties of positive integers or whole numbers that do not have a fraction or decimal part. Munshi made significant contribution to the number theory, in that he linked arithmetic geometry, representation theory and complex analysis in many ways. For this, he was awarded the Ramanujan Prize which is given for mathematicians under the age of 45 from a developing country.

Ritabrata Munshi did his doctoral studies at Princeton University in the U.S with Sir Andrew Wiles, a famous mathematician. After a few post-doctoral years in the U.S, he joined the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in India.

He has received many awards for his work, including the Infosys Science Foundation’s 2017 award in mathematical sciences, the Birla Science Prize (2013) and the ISI Alumni gold medal. He was awarded the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology in 2015. He was also awarded the ICTP Ramanujan Prize in 2018.

Munshi was elected a Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences in 2016. Munshi was awarded the Swarna-Jayanti fellowship by the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India. He was also elected a fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences in 2016.

In 2018 he was an invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM). He was elected a fellow of the Indian National Science Academy in 2020.

He is on the editorial board of the Journal of the Ramanujan Mathematical Society and the Hardy-Ramanujan Journal.

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What’s in Shakespeare’s first folio?

Published seven years after William Shakespeare’s death in 1616, the first folio is credited with sustaining the legacy of the playwright and ensuring that generations could enjoy the bard’s plays.

What is a folio?

A folio is a large book made by folding sheets of paper in half, with each sheet forming four pages. This format was usually reserved for weighty historic or religious subjects. Shakespeare’s first folio was the first of its kind published in England devoted exclusively to plays.

Shakespeare’s first folio Published in 1623, the full title of Shakespeare’s first folio is Mr William Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies.

The word folio refers to its considerable size. Plays prior to this were considered too trivial to be printed in such a large format. Assembled and edited by the playwright’s friends and fellow actors John Heminge and Henry Condell, the first folio contains 36 Shakespearean plays, 18 of which had never been printed before. Were it not for their appearance in the folio, they would most probably have been lost forever – they include As You Like It. The Tempest, Julius Caesar, and Macbeth.

It is believed that 800 copies of the first folio were produced, out of which 233 still exist. Each copy is said to be unique because the manuscripts were proofread and corrected while the printing was in progress.

Sold for a pound

The original selling price for a copy of Shakespeare’s first folio was one pound and like most books of that era, it was sold unbound so the buyers needed to have it bound in leather. Today, an original copy of this book can fetch more than two million pounds. It is easily the most important collection of plays ever published and valued throughout the world.

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