Rabindra Nath Mohapatra (born 1 September 1944) is an

Indian American Indian Americans or Indo-Americans are citizens of the United States with ancestry from India. The United States Census Bureau uses the term Asian Indian to avoid confusion with Native Americans, who have also historically been referred to ...

theoretical physicist Theoretical physics is a branch of physics that employs mathematical models and abstractions of physical objects and systems to rationalize, explain and predict natural phenomena. This is in contrast to experimental physics, which uses experim ...

, known for his work on the

seesaw mechanism In the theory of grand unification of particle physics, and, in particular, in theories of neutrino masses and neutrino oscillation, the seesaw mechanism is a generic model used to understand the relative sizes of observed neutrino masses, of the ...

in neutrino physics. Mohapatra was born in the small village Musagadia in

Mayurbhanj State Mayurbhanj State (or ''Morbhanj'') ( or, ମୟୁରଭଞ୍ଜ ରାଜ୍ୟ) was one of the princely states of India during the period of the British Raj. It was one of the largest states of the Eastern States Agency and one of the three ...

. He studied at

Utkal University Utkal University (UU) is a Public university in Bhubaneswar, Khordha district, Khordha, Odisha, and is the oldest university in Odisha, the state, and the 17th-oldest university in India. It is a teaching-cum-affiliating university. The pre ...

Bhubaneswar Bhubaneswar (; ) is the capital and largest city of the States and territories of India, Indian state of Odisha. The region, especially the old town, was historically often depicted as ''Ekamra Kshetra'' (area (''kshetra'') adorned with mango tr ...

(bachelor's degree 1964) and the

University of Delhi Delhi University (DU), formally the University of Delhi, is a collegiate central university located in New Delhi, India. It was founded in 1922 by an Act of the Central Legislative Assembly and is recognized as an Institute of Eminence (IoE ...

(master's degree 1966). In 1969 he earned his PhD under Robert Marshak at the

University of Rochester The University of Rochester (U of R, UR, or U of Rochester) is a private university, private research university in Rochester, New York. The university grants Undergraduate education, undergraduate and graduate degrees, including Doctorate, do ...

. Subsequently he was a post-doc at

Stony Brook University Stony Brook University (SBU), officially the State University of New York at Stony Brook, is a public research university in Stony Brook, New York. Along with the University at Buffalo, it is one of the State University of New York syste ...

and at the

University of Maryland The University of Maryland, College Park (University of Maryland, UMD, or simply Maryland) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland. Founded in 1856, UMD is the Flagship un ...

. In 1974 he became an assistant professor and in 1976 associate professor at

City College City college may refer to: In the United States * Community college, a type of educational institution sometimes called a ''junior college'' or a ''city college'' in the United States * City College of New York ** 137th Street – City College (IR ...

CUNY The City University of New York ( CUNY; , ) is the Public university, public university system of Education in New York City, New York City. It is the largest urban university system in the United States, comprising 25 campuses: eleven Upper divis ...

under Bunji Sakita. In the academic year 1980/1 he was a visiting professor at

Max Planck Institute for Physics The Max Planck Institute for Physics (MPP) is a physics institute in Munich, Germany that specializes in high energy physics and astroparticle physics. It is part of the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft and is also known as the Werner Heisenberg Institut ...

. Since 1983 he has been a professor at the

. He was a visiting professor at CERN (1976, 1981, 1985), at

SLAC 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 ...

, at

Los Alamos National Laboratory Los Alamos National Laboratory (often shortened as Los Alamos and LANL) is one of the sixteen research and development laboratories of the United States Department of Energy (DOE), located a short distance northwest of Santa Fe, New Mexico, i ...

, and at

Brookhaven National Laboratory Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) is a United States Department of Energy national laboratory located in Upton, Long Island, and was formally established in 1947 at the site of Camp Upton, a former U.S. Army base and Japanese internment c ...

. From 2005 to 2007 he was a visiting professor at TU München. Mohapatra works on

GUT Gut or guts may refer to: Anatomy * Abdomen or belly, the region of a vertebrate between the chest and pelvis * Abdominal obesity or "a gut", a large deposit of belly fat * Gastrointestinal tract or gut, the system of digestive organs * Ins ...

s, unified theories of elementary particles, and neutrino physics. In particular he, with G. Senjanovic, developed in the 1970s left-right symmetric unified theories (which are then spontaneously broken to the observed theories of

electroweak interaction In particle physics, the electroweak interaction or electroweak force is the unified description of two of the four known fundamental interactions of nature: electromagnetism and the weak interaction. Although these two forces appear very diff ...

s with

parity violation In physics, a parity transformation (also called parity inversion) is the flip in the sign of ''one'' spatial coordinate. In three dimensions, it can also refer to the simultaneous flip in the sign of all three spatial coordinates (a point refle ...

.) with prediction of a neutrino mass. In 1980/81 Mohapatra was an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow and in 2005 he received the

Humboldt Prize The Humboldt Prize, the Humboldt-Forschungspreis in German, also known as the Humboldt Research Award, is an award given by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation of Germany to internationally renowned scientists and scholars who work outside of G ...

. In 2009 he received an honorary doctorate from North Orissa University in India (2009). Since 1987 he has been a member of the

Indian Academy of Sciences The Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore was founded by Indian Physicist and Nobel Laureate C. V. Raman, and was registered as a society on 24 April 1934. Inaugurated on 31 July 1934, it began with 65 founding fellows. The first general mee ...

Works

*''Unification and Supersymmetry – the frontiers of Quark-Lepton Physics''. Springer 1986, 1991, 3rd edn. 2003, * with Palash Pal: ''Massive Neutrinos in Physics and Astrophysics''. World Scientific, 1991, 1998, 3rd edn. 2004 * As editor with C. Lai: ''Selected Papers on gauge theories and fundamental interactions''. World Scientific 1981 .'' The Neutrino Story: One tiny particles grand role in the cosmos'' Springer Nature (2020)

References

External links

*
Homepage in MarylandScientific publications of Rabindra Mohapatra
on

INSPIRE-HEP INSPIRE-HEP is an open access digital library for the field of high energy physics (HEP). It is the successor of the Stanford Physics Information Retrieval System (SPIRES) database, the main literature database for high energy physics since the 1970 ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mohapatra, Rabindra 1945 births 20th-century Indian physicists University of Maryland, College Park faculty City College of New York faculty Delhi University alumni University of Rochester alumni Utkal University alumni Indian theoretical physicists Living people People associated with CERN