Mumbai: Professor Jainendra K. Jain, a Rajasthan-born theoretical physicist whose discovery of composite fermions transformed the understanding of quantum matter, has become the first Indian to receive the prestigious Wolf Prize in Physics.
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The award was presented to Jain by Israeli President Isaac Herzog at a ceremony in the Knesset on June 18.
“I am deeply honoured by this recognition. Physics has given me far more than I could ever have imagined when I began this journey as a young boy growing up in rural Rajasthan. I feel immensely fortunate and am grateful to my teachers, students, collaborators, family, and friends, and to the many scientists whose work laid the foundation for my own,” said Jain.
Jain, who grew up in Sambhar, a small town on the edge of the Thar Desert in Rajasthan, is the founding director of the newly established Lodha Theoretical Physics Institute (LTPI) and serves as the Evan Pugh University Professor and Eberly Family Chair in Physics at Pennsylvania State University, USA.
The Wolf Prize in Physics, awarded annually by the Wolf Foundation in Israel since 1978, honours outstanding physicists whose discoveries have profoundly advanced human knowledge. It is widely regarded as one of the most prestigious awards in the field. Twenty-seven previous recipients of the Wolf Prize in Physics have subsequently gone on to receive the Nobel Prize.
Jain made the award-winning breakthrough in 1989 as a young postdoctoral scholar at Yale University.
Decades later, Jain’s pioneering work on composite fermions has become a central concept in modern condensed matter physics.
Growing up in rural Rajasthan, Jain was fascinated by physics. The story of Indian physicist Satyendra Nath Bose and his interaction with Albert Einstein, which Jain encountered in a children’s magazine, made a lasting impression on him at a young age.
At the age of 12, while visiting family in Kolkata, his family’s car collided with a tram. His mother died in the accident, and Jain suffered critical injuries. It was the low-cost Jaipur Foot prosthetic, developed by Dr P.K. Sethi and craftsman Ram Chandra Sharma, that helped him walk again and continue his education.
He went on to earn a bachelor’s degree from Maharaja College in Jaipur, a master’s degree from IIT Kanpur, and a PhD from Stony Brook University in New York. In 1981, at the age of 21, he boarded a plane for the United States for the first time in his life. From there, there was no looking back.
Jain has co-authored more than 250 scientific articles and a monograph, Composite Fermions, published in 2007 by Cambridge University Press. Among his other honours are the Oliver E. Buckley Prize of the American Physical Society, the Distinguished Alumnus Award of the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, and election to the United States National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Indian National Science Academy.
Jain’s vision also extends to India through LTPI, where he is helping build the country’s first fully privately funded centre dedicated to fundamental research in theoretical physics.
“I hope LTPI will help create an environment where young scientists can pursue ambitious ideas, collaborate with outstanding researchers from around the world, and engage with the deepest questions in physics,” said Jain.
