Probir Roy (born 4 October 1942) is an Indian particle physicist and a former professor at
Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. He is also a senior scientist of the
Indian National Science Academy at
Bose Institute
Bose Institute (Basu Bigyan Mandir) is a public research institute of India and also one of its oldest. The Institute was established in 1917 by Acharya Sir Jagdish Chandra Bose, the father of modern scientific research in the Indian subcont ...
and a former Raja Ramanna fellow of
Department of Atomic Energy
The Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) (IAST: ''Paramāṇu Ūrjā Vibhāga'') is a department with headquarters in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India. DAE was established in 1954 by a Presidential Order. DAE has been engaged in the development of nucl ...
at
Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics
The Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics (SINP) is an institution of basic research and training in physical and biophysical sciences located in Bidhannagar, Kolkata, India. The institute is named after the famous Indian physicist Meghnad Saha.
...
.
Known for the development of a
sum rule on
two-photon processes, Roy is an elected fellow of all the three major Indian science academies –
Indian Academy of Sciences, Indian National Science Academy and
National Academy of Sciences, India
The National Academy of Sciences, India, established in 1930, is the oldest science academy in India. It is located in Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh. Prof. Meghnad Saha was the founder president.
Fellows
*Suddhasatwa Basu
* Sudha Bhattacharya
* Ch ...
– as well as of the
American Physical Society
The American Physical Society (APS) is a not-for-profit membership organization of professionals in physics and related disciplines, comprising nearly fifty divisions, sections, and other units. Its mission is the advancement and diffusion of k ...
. The
Council of Scientific and Industrial Research
The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (IAST: ''vaigyanik tathā audyogik anusandhāna pariṣada''), abbreviated as CSIR, was established by the Government of India in September 1942 as an autonomous body that has emerged as the l ...
, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded Roy the
Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, one of the highest Indian science awards, for his contributions to physical sciences in 1987.
Biography
![King's College, Cambridge2](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b8/King%27s_College%2C_Cambridge2.jpg)
Born on 4 October 1942 at Calcutta in the
Bengal
Bengal ( ; bn, বাংলা/বঙ্গ, translit=Bānglā/Bôngô, ) is a geopolitical, cultural and historical region in South Asia, specifically in the eastern part of the Indian subcontinent at the apex of the Bay of Bengal, predom ...
state of
British India
The provinces of India, earlier presidencies of British India and still earlier, presidency towns, were the administrative divisions of British governance on the Indian subcontinent. Collectively, they have been called British India. In one ...
to Kiran Lal Roy-Sujata Sikdar couple, Probir Roy graduated in physics with honours from
Presidency College under Calcutta University in 1962 before moving to
Cambridge University
, mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts.
Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge.
, established =
, other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...
to obtain an
MA (Cantab)
In the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and Dublin, Bachelors of Arts are promoted to the degree of Master of Arts or Master in Arts (MA) on application after six or seven years' seniority as members of the university (including years as an un ...
from
King's College, Cambridge
King's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Formally The King's College of Our Lady and Saint Nicholas in Cambridge, the college lies beside the River Cam and faces out onto King's Parade in the centre of the city ...
in 1965.
Subsequently, he joined
Stanford University
Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...
for his doctoral studies and secured a PhD, mentored by S. M. Berman, for his thesis in
Kaon physics, in 1968.
During this period, Roy worked at
Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, originally named the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center,
is a United States Department of Energy National Laboratory operated by Stanford University under the programmatic direction of the U.S. Departme ...
as a research assistant (1966–68) and as a temporary research associate (1968). He remained in the US for three more years for his post-doctoral work at
Cornell University
Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach an ...
where he worked at the laboratories of
Kenneth G. Wilson
Kenneth Geddes "Ken" Wilson (June 8, 1936 – June 15, 2013) was an American theoretical physicist and a pioneer in leveraging computers for studying particle physics. He was awarded the 1982 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on phase ...
, who would go on to receive the
Nobel Prize for physics in 1982,
and
Toichiro Kinoshita
Tōichirō Kinoshita (, '' Kinoshita Tōichirō ''; b. 23 January 1925 in Tokyo) is a Japanese-American theoretical physicist. Kinoshita studied physics at the University of Tokyo, earning his bachelor's degree in 1947 and then his PhD in 1952. A ...
, an
APS
APS or Aps or aps or similar may refer to:
Education
* Abbottabad Public School
* Adarsh Public School, a public school in New Delhi, India
* Alamogordo Public Schools
* Albuquerque Public Schools, New Mexico, US school district
* Allendale Publ ...
fellow,
simultaneously serving the University as an instructor. Before returning to India in 1972, he had a one-year spell at
CERN
The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN (; ; ), is an intergovernmental organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. Established in 1954, it is based in a northwestern suburb of Gene ...
during 1971–72 as a visiting scientist.
Roy's career at
Tata Institute of Fundamental Research started in 1972 as a visiting fellow and he became a regular research fellow a year later.
He served the institution for three decades and half and before his superannuation from TIFR service as a senior professor in 2017, he held various positions as reader (1976–83), associate professor (1983–90) and professor (1990–93). After retiring from regular service, Roy continued his research at
Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics
The Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics (SINP) is an institution of basic research and training in physical and biophysical sciences located in Bidhannagar, Kolkata, India. The institute is named after the famous Indian physicist Meghnad Saha.
...
as a
DAE
DAE or Dae may refer to:
As an acronym
* DAE (chemotherapy), a chemotherapy regimen consisting of Daunorubicin, Ara-C (cytarabine) and Etoposide
* Daporijo Airport, the IATA code for an airport in India
* Daxing Airport Express, the airport trans ...
Raja Ramanna fellow of the Board of Research in Nuclear Sciences (BRNS) until 2012
and carries on his research at the Center for Astroparticle Physics and Space Science (CAPSS) of
Bose Institute
Bose Institute (Basu Bigyan Mandir) is a public research institute of India and also one of its oldest. The Institute was established in 1917 by Acharya Sir Jagdish Chandra Bose, the father of modern scientific research in the Indian subcont ...
as a senior scientist of the
Indian National Science Academy ever since. In between, he had several spells abroad as a visiting faculty and the institutions he has served include
Oxford University
Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...
,
University of Texas at Austin
The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...
,
University of California, Riverside
The University of California, Riverside (UCR or UC Riverside) is a public land-grant research university in Riverside, California. It is one of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The main campus sits on in a suburban distr ...
,
University of Hawaii at Manoa,
University of Helsinki
The University of Helsinki ( fi, Helsingin yliopisto, sv, Helsingfors universitet, abbreviated UH) is a public research university located in Helsinki, Finland since 1829, but founded in the city of Turku (in Swedish ''Åbo'') in 1640 as the ...
and
Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics
The Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (KITP) is a research institute of the University of California, Santa Barbara. KITP is one of the most renowned institutes for theoretical physics in the world, and brings theorists in physics and rela ...
.
Roy is married to Manashi Bhattacharya and the couple has two children, Jagori and Analabha.
The family lives in
Salt Lake
A salt lake or saline lake is a landlocked body of water that has a concentration of salts (typically sodium chloride) and other dissolved minerals significantly higher than most lakes (often defined as at least three grams of salt per litre). ...
, a satellite city of
Kolkata
Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , the official name until 2001) is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal, on the eastern bank of the Hooghly River west of the border with Bangladesh. It is the primary business, comme ...
, West Bengal.
Legacy
![Photon-photon scattering](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5a/Photon-photon_scattering.svg)
Roy's work in
Kaon physics during his doctoral studies at Stanford University was based on the applications of algebra in the discipline and his thesis was subsequently published by the university under the title, ''Current-algebra Applications in Kaon Physics''.
Later, he worked on
scale invariance and
deep inelastic scattering
Deep inelastic scattering is the name given to a process used to probe the insides of hadrons (particularly the baryons, such as protons and neutrons), using electrons, muons and neutrinos. It provided the first convincing evidence of the reality ...
while at CERN, Geneva and his research thereafter has covered several aspects of
high energy physics.
Roy has developed a new
sum rule in
two-photon processes which is related to the collision of two real polarised
photons
A photon () is an elementary particle that is a quantum of the electromagnetic field, including electromagnetic radiation such as light and radio waves, and the force carrier for the electromagnetic force. Photons are massless, so they alway ...
and the equation is now known as ''Roy's Sum Rule''.
Further, he proposed a solution for ''U(n)-symmetric
Thirring model
The Thirring model is an exactly solvable quantum field theory which describes the self-interactions of a Dirac field in (1+1) dimensions.
Definition
The Thirring model is given by the Lagrangian density
:
\mathcal= \overline(i\partial\!\!\!/ ...
''
which has been detailed in two of his articles published in 1975.
Later, shifting his focus to
supersymmetry
In a supersymmetric theory the equations for force and the equations for matter are identical. In theoretical and mathematical physics, any theory with this property has the principle of supersymmetry (SUSY). Dozens of supersymmetric theories e ...
and
supergravity, he suggested new ''τ -number'' violating signals for
R-parity breaking and estimated an ''upper bound on the gaugino-gravitino mass ratio''. ''Deep inelastic
lepton
In particle physics, a lepton is an elementary particle of half-integer spin ( spin ) that does not undergo strong interactions. Two main classes of leptons exist: charged leptons (also known as the electron-like leptons or muons), and neutr ...
-
hadron
In particle physics, a hadron (; grc, ἁδρός, hadrós; "stout, thick") is a composite subatomic particle made of two or more quarks held together by the strong interaction. They are analogous to molecules that are held together by the ele ...
-
photon
A photon () is an elementary particle that is a quantum of the electromagnetic field, including electromagnetic radiation such as light and radio waves, and the force carrier for the electromagnetic force. Photons are massless, so they always ...
processes'' with regard to their
phenomenological aspects have been another area of his studies.
Roy has also done extensive studies on
neutrinos
A neutrino ( ; denoted by the Greek letter ) is a fermion (an elementary particle with spin of ) that interacts only via the weak interaction and gravity. The neutrino is so named because it is electrically neutral and because its rest mass is ...
and Higgs mesons which covered the detection of heavy neutrinos, ultralight neutrinos in super-symmetry,
oscillations
Oscillation is the repetitive or periodic variation, typically in time, of some measure about a central value (often a point of equilibrium) or between two or more different states. Familiar examples of oscillation include a swinging pendulum ...
and flavours, and his studies on neutrino detection helped
India-based Neutrino Observatory in blueprinting the proposed detector at the observatory.
Roy's studies have been documented by way of a number of articles
and the online article repository of the Indian Academy of Sciences has listed 106 of them.
Besides, he has published four more books other than his PhD thesis viz. ''Theory of Lepton-Hadron Processes at High Energies: Partons, Scale Invariance and Light-Cone Physics'',
''Supersymmetry and Supergravity Nonperturbative QCD''
''Phenomenology of the standard model and beyond'',
and ''Theory and Phenomenology of Sparticles: An Account of Four-Dimensional N=1 Supersymmetry in High Energy Physics''.
Roy has also contributed chapters to books published by others
and has mentored doctoral and post-doctoral scholars.
The lecture series or invited talks delivered by him included ''Linear collider signals of anomaly-mediated supersymmetry breaking'', at the physics working group meeting of American Linear Collider Physics in 2004,
''The wonderful world of neutrinos'' at
S.N. Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences
S. N. Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences (SNBNCBS) is an autonomous research institute dedicated to basic research in mathematics sciences under the Department of Science and Technology of Government of India. It is located in West Beng ...
in 2004,
''Measuring the deviation from maximal mixing of atmospheric neutrinos at INO'', at PANIC 05 in
Santa Fe, New Mexico
Santa Fe ( ; , Spanish for 'Holy Faith'; tew, Oghá P'o'oge, Tewa for 'white shell water place'; tiw, Hulp'ó'ona, label=Tiwa language, Northern Tiwa; nv, Yootó, Navajo for 'bead + water place') is the capital of the U.S. state of New Mexico. ...
,
''Event-shape of dileptons plus missing energy at a linear collider as a SUSY/ADD discriminant'' at
Indian Institute of Science in 2006,
''Symmetries of nonhierarchical neutrinos from high to low scales'' at IWTHEP-2007,
and ''Dark Energy of the Universe'' at
Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Pune in 2015.
Roy is one among the Indian participants in the ''Oxford-India Network in Theoretical Physical Sciences'', an initiative promoted by the John Fell Fund.
He was a member of the research committee of the
Council of Scientific and Industrial Research
The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (IAST: ''vaigyanik tathā audyogik anusandhāna pariṣada''), abbreviated as CSIR, was established by the Government of India in September 1942 as an autonomous body that has emerged as the l ...
during 1991–94.
Roy served as the chairman of the Physics Graduate School from 1992 to 1997 and the Department of Theoretical Physics from 1997 to 2002, both based at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research.
He sat in the governing council of
S.N. Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences
S. N. Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences (SNBNCBS) is an autonomous research institute dedicated to basic research in mathematics sciences under the Department of Science and Technology of Government of India. It is located in West Beng ...
from 1997 to 2002 and in the editorial boards of ''Indian Journal of Pure and Applied Physics'',
''Pramana'' and ''
Indian Journal of Physics'' during various terms. He also served as the vice-president of the
Indian Physical Society in 1996 and presided the society in 2002.
Awards and honours
During his college days at King's College, Cambridge, Roy received three honours from the institution; Powel Prize for the best student in natural sciences (1964), senior scholarship (1964) and honorary scholarship (1965).
The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research awarded him the
Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize
The Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology (SSB) is a science award in India given annually by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) for notable and outstanding research, Applied science, applied or Fundamenta ...
, one of the highest Indian science awards in 1987.
The Indian Academy of Sciences elected him as a fellow in 1989
and he became a fellow of the Indian National Science Academy in 1992.
Two years later, INSA selected him for the exchange fellowship between the academy of the
Royal Society
The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...
and the
American Physical Society
The American Physical Society (APS) is a not-for-profit membership organization of professionals in physics and related disciplines, comprising nearly fifty divisions, sections, and other units. Its mission is the advancement and diffusion of k ...
elected him as a fellow in 1995.
He delivered the Meghnad Saha award oration of the
Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science in 1997 and received the elected fellowship of the
National Academy of Sciences, India
The National Academy of Sciences, India, established in 1930, is the oldest science academy in India. It is located in Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh. Prof. Meghnad Saha was the founder president.
Fellows
*Suddhasatwa Basu
* Sudha Bhattacharya
* Ch ...
in 2001.
Selected bibliography
Books
*
*
*
*
*
Chapters
*
*
Articles
*
*
*
*
*
Notes
References
External links
*
*
Further reading
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Roy, Probir
1942 births
Indian particle physicists
Scientists from Kolkata
Bengali physicists
Indian scientific authors
Presidency University, Kolkata alumni
Alumni of King's College London
Alumni of King's College, Cambridge
Stanford University alumni
Cornell University alumni
Tata Institute of Fundamental Research faculty
University of Texas at Austin faculty
University of California, Riverside
University of Hawaiʻi faculty
Academic personnel of the University of Helsinki
Recipients of the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award in Physical Science
Fellows of the Indian Academy of Sciences
Fellows of the Indian National Science Academy
Fellows of The National Academy of Sciences, India
Fellows of the American Physical Society
Living people
People associated with CERN