Ashoke Sen, a professor in Physics faculty of the Harishchandra Research Institute, situated at the city outskirts and funded by the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), received the news that he was selected for the inaugural group of nine recipients of the Fundamental Physics Prize this year when he was abroad last week.
"I am thrilled, undoubtedly. But more importantly, I feel that a prize like this will deter parents who discourage their children from pursuing a career in pure sciences. However, I must add that those interested in Physics should pursue the subject out of passion and not with the aim of making money," Sen told reporters.
Sen, 56, who is known for his research on the 'String Theory', is an alumni of the prestigious Presidency College at Kolkata and IIT-Kanpur.
He has been associated with premier US-based institutes like Fermilab and Stanford Linear Accelerator Centre, besides the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research at Mumbai.
Sen had received the Padma Shri in 2001, besides being honoured with a number of prizes like the International Centre for Theoretical Physics Prize (1989), S S Bhatnagar Award (1994). He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1998.
Married to Sumathi Rao, who is also a faculty member in the Physics department of Harishchandra Research Institute, Sen said he also likes to read novels and is particularly fond of the Harry Potter series as books like these help him shake off the stress that builds up in course of intense research work.
Yuri Milner is said to have himself studied Physics at the under-graduate level before dropping out of college and making billions by investing in companies like Facebook.
According to the Fundamental Physics Prize Foundation's website, Sen was chosen "for uncovering striking evidence of strong-weak duality in certain super-symmetric string theories and gauge theories, opening the path for the realisation that all string theories are different limits of the same underlying theory".