Ashoke Sen

Ashoke Sen, FRS (Bengali: ; 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
[hide]

1 Early life

2 Career

3 Honors and awards

4 References

5 External links

Early life[edit]
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 of Science degree in 1975 from the
Presidency College under the University of Calcutta, and his masters 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[edit]
String theory

Fundamental objects

String

Brane

D-brane

Perturbative theory

Superstring

Bosonic

Type I

Type II (IIA / IIB)

Heterotic (SO(32) E8E8)

Non-perturbative results

S-duality

T-duality

M-theory

AdS/CFT correspondence
Phenomenology

Phenomenology

Cosmology

Landscape

Mathematics

Mirror symmetry
Monstrous moonshine

Related concepts[show]
Theorists[show]

History

Glossary

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 Dbranes 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 on the attractor mechanism
and the precision counting of microstates of black holes. Recently he has joined National
Institute of Science Education and Research (NISER), Bhubaneswar, India as an honorary
fellow.[7]

Honors and awards[edit]

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), 2011, awarded by Bengal Engineering and Science
University, Shibpur (Presently Indian Institute of Engineering Sciences and Technology,
Shibpur) [13]

Doctor of Science (Honoris Causa), 2009, awarded by IIT Kharagpur [14]

Infosys Prize in the Mathematical Sciences, 2009 [15]

Padma Shri in 2001[16]

Fellow of the Royal Society 1998 [1]

Fellow of the Indian National Science Academy in 1996 [17]

S.S. Bhatnagar award in 1994

Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences in 1991[2]

ICTP Prize in 1989 [18]

References[edit]
1.

^ Jump up to: a b c Pulakkat, Hari (Dec 19, 2013). "How many of us know about
Breakthrough Prize winner, Ashoke Sen?". The Economic Times.

2.
3.

^ Jump up to: a b "Fellow Profile - Sen, Prof. Ashoke". Indian Academy of Sciences.
Bangalore: Indian Academy of Sciences. Retrieved 23 January 2016.
Jump up ^ Physicist with pillow power

4.

Jump up ^ 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: 217221. arXiv:hep-th/9402032. Bibcode:1994PhLB..329..217S. doi:10.1016/03702693(94)90763-3.

5.

Jump up ^ Sen, Ashoke (1998). "Tachyon condensation on the brane antibrane system".
JHEP 8: 012. arXiv:hep-th/9805170. Bibcode:1998JHEP...08..012S. doi:10.1088/11266708/1998/08/012.

6.

Jump up ^ 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.

Jump up ^ http://physics.niser.ac.in/mem.php?ty=fc

8.

Jump up ^ "Dirac Medallists 2014".

9.

Jump up ^ [1]

10.

Jump up ^ "Rajesh Khanna, Sridevi, Mary Kom, Rahul Dravid on Padma list". Times of
India. TNN. Jan 26, 2013.

11.

Jump up ^ New annual US$3 million Fundamental Physics Prize recognizes

transformative advances in the field, FPP, accessed 1 August 2012

12.

Jump up ^ "Indian scientist Ashoke Sen bags top physics honour". The Times Of India.
2012-08-02.

13.

Jump up ^ [2]

14.

Jump up ^ http://www.iitkgp.ac.in/institute/index.php?page=honors

15.

Jump up ^ Infosys Prize 2009 Mathematical Sciences

16.

Jump up ^ "Padma Awards" (PDF). Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India.

2015. Retrieved July 21, 2015.

17.

Jump up ^ The Year Book 2014 // Indian National Science Academy, New Delhi

18.

Jump up ^ "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.

The Hindu, Sunday, January 7, 2001: Stringing together the ultimate law States that Dr.
Ashoke Sen of HRI has "made several important contributions to the String Theory".