MUMBAI: Professor Jainendra K. Jain, the Rajasthan-born theoretical physicist whose discovery of complex fermions transformed the understanding of quantum matter, is the first Indian to receive the prestigious Wolf Prize in Physics.
The award was presented to Jane by Israeli President Isaac Herzog at a ceremony held in the Knesset on June 18.
“I am deeply honored by this recognition. Physics has given me so much more than I could have ever imagined when I began this journey as a young boy growing up in rural Rajasthan. I feel extremely fortunate and am grateful to my teachers, students, collaborators, family and friends, and to the many scientists whose work laid the foundation for mine,” Jain said.
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 Institute for Theoretical Physics (LTPI) and serves as the Evan Pugh University Professor and Eberly Family Chair of Physics at Pennsylvania State University, USA.
The Wolf Prize in Physics has been awarded annually by the Wolf Foundation in Israel since 1978, honoring outstanding physicists whose discoveries have profoundly advanced human knowledge. It is widely considered one of the most prestigious awards in the field. Twenty-seven previous winners of the Wolf Prize in Physics have received the Nobel Prize.
Jain achieved an award-winning feat in 1989 when he was a young postdoctoral researcher at Yale University.
Decades later, Jain’s pioneering work on complex fermions became a central concept in modern condensed matter physics.
Jain grew up in rural Rajasthan and was fascinated by physics. The story of Indian physicist Satyendra Nath Bose and his interaction with Albert Einstein, whom Jain met in a children’s magazine, left a lasting impression on him at an early age.
At the age of 12, while visiting his family in Kolkata, his family’s car collided with a tram. His mother died in the accident, and Jain was seriously injured. It was Jaipur’s low-cost foot prosthetics, developed by Dr PK Sethi and craftsman Ram Chandra Sharma, that helped him walk again and continue his education.
He received his bachelor’s degree from Maharaja’s College, Jaipur, master’s degree from IIT Kanpur, and doctorate from Stony Brook University in New York. In 1981, when he was 21, he boarded a plane bound 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 monographs entitled Complex Fermions, which was published by Cambridge University Press in 2007. Among his other honors are the Oliver E. Buckley of the American Physical Society, the Distinguished Alumnus Award from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, and election to the US National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Indian National Academy of Sciences.
Jain’s vision also extends to India through LTPI, where he is helping to build the country’s first fully privately funded center dedicated to fundamental research in theoretical physics.
“I hope that LTPI will help create an environment in which young scientists can pursue ambitious ideas, collaborate with outstanding researchers from around the world, and grapple with the deepest questions in physics,” Jain said.
