Noted scientist Professor Sriram Ramaswamy has been awarded the prestigious GD Birla Award for Scientific Research for 2006.
The award carries a cash award of Rs 1.5 lakh and is in recognition of "high calibre scientific research" by an Indian scientist below 50 years of age. "There are several awards for senior scientists. But the fact that the GD Birla Award for Scientific Research is given to those below 50 has won wide appreciation from the scientific community," said BN Tandon, director of the KK Birla Foundation that institutes the award.
Professor Ramaswamy is an authority on condensed matter theory. He is currently with the Centre for Condensed Matter Theory, department of physics, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.
The award is in recognition of his outstanding work in "statistical mechanics and dynamics of soft and biological matter".
The award was instituted in 1991. Noted scientists like Dr RA Mashelkar, Ashoke Sen, and Dr Goverdhan Mehta are some of the earlier awardees.