Shiraz Naval Minwalla (born January 2, 1972) is an Indian

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 experimen ...

and

string theorist In physics, string theory is a theoretical framework in which the point-like particles of particle physics are replaced by one-dimensional objects called strings. String theory describes how these strings propagate through space and intera ...

. He is a faculty member in the Department of Theoretical Physics at

Tata Institute of Fundamental Research Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) is a public deemed research university located in Mumbai, India that is dedicated to basic research in mathematics and the sciences. It is a Deemed University and works under the umbrella of the D ...

Mumbai Mumbai (, ; also known as Bombay — the official name until 1995) is the capital city of the Indian state of Maharashtra and the ''de facto'' financial centre of India. According to the United Nations, as of 2018, Mumbai is the second- ...

. Prior to his present position, Minwalla was a

Harvard Junior Fellow The Society of Fellows is a group of scholars selected at the beginnings of their careers by Harvard University for their potential to advance academic wisdom, upon whom are bestowed distinctive opportunities to foster their individual and intell ...

and subsequently an assistant professor at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

Early life

Born in

Maharashtra Maharashtra (; , abbr. MH or Maha) is a states and union territories of India, state in the western India, western peninsular region of India occupying a substantial portion of the Deccan Plateau. Maharashtra is the List of states and union te ...

, India, in 1972, to a

Parsi Parsis () or Parsees are an ethnoreligious group of the Indian subcontinent adhering to Zoroastrianism. They are descended from Persians who migrated to Medieval India during and after the Arab conquest of Iran (part of the early Muslim conq ...

-Zoroastrian father (Naval) and a Muslim mother (Khadija), Minwalla graduated from

Campion School, Mumbai , motto_translation = Joy in Truth , established = , type = Private primary and secondary school , religion = Catholicism , denomination = Jesuits , patron ...

in 1988 and then

Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur The Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (IIT Kanpur) Hindi: भारतीय प्रौद्योगिकी संस्थान कानपुर) is a public institute of technology located in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, India. It was ...

in 1995. He later moved to

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...

to earn his PhD under the guidance of

Nathan Seiberg Nathan "Nati" Seiberg (; born September 22, 1956) is an Israeli American theoretical physicist who works on quantum field theory and string theory. He is currently a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, United ...

Awards

Minwalla was awarded the Swarnajayanti Fellowship 2005-06 by the Department of Science & Technology,

Government of India The Government of India (ISO: ; often abbreviated as GoI), known as the Union Government or Central Government but often simply as the Centre, is the national government of the Republic of India, a federal democracy located in South Asia, c ...

. He was awarded the

ICTP Prize The International Centre for Theoretical Physics Prize, ICTP Prize, worth 3000 Euros is awarded to a young (under 40) physicist or mathematician from a developing country to promote theoretical mathematics and physics research in the developing wor ...

in 2010 and the

Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology 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 ...

, the highest science award in India, in the physical sciences category in 2011. He was awarded the Infosys Prize 2013 in the field of Physical Sciences by the Infosys Science Foundation. Minwalla was awarded the 2014 New Horizons in Physics Prize by the

Fundamental Physics Prize The Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics is one of the Breakthrough Prizes, awarded by the Breakthrough Prize Board. Initially named Fundamental Physics Prize, it was founded in July 2012 by Russia-born Israeli entrepreneur, venture capita ...

for "his pioneering contributions to the study of string theory and quantum field theory; and in particular his work on the connection between the equations of fluid dynamics and Albert Einstein's equations of general relativity." In 2016,

The World Academy of Sciences The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) is a merit-based science academy established for developing countries, uniting 1,000 scientists in some 70 countries. Its principal aim is to promote scientific capacity and excellence for sustainable devel ...

awarded him the

TWAS Prize This is a list of recipients of the TWAS Prize, awarded annually by The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS). Summary Agricultural Sciences Biology Chemistry Earth Sciences Engineering Sciences Mathematics Medical Sc ...

in Physics.

Notable contributions to the field

* Analysis of primary operators on AdS4 and AdS7 * Three-point functions in N=4 supersymmetric

Yang–Mills theory In mathematical physics, Yang–Mills theory is a gauge theory based on a special unitary group SU(''N''), or more generally any compact, reductive Lie algebra. Yang–Mills theory seeks to describe the behavior of elementary particles using th ...

and

AdS/CFT In theoretical physics, the anti-de Sitter/conformal field theory correspondence, sometimes called Maldacena duality or gauge/gravity duality, is a conjectured relationship between two kinds of physical theories. On one side are anti-de Sitter s ...

Noncommutative In mathematics, a binary operation is commutative if changing the order of the operands does not change the result. It is a fundamental property of many binary operations, and many mathematical proofs depend on it. Most familiar as the name of ...

perturbative dynamics (with

and

Mark Van Raamsdonk Mark Van Raamsdonk is a professor at the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of British Columbia since 2002. Before that, he was a postdoc at Stanford University from 2000 until 2002 and studied as a graduate student at Princeto ...

) * Noncommutative

soliton In mathematics and physics, a soliton or solitary wave is a self-reinforcing wave packet that maintains its shape while it propagates at a constant velocity. Solitons are caused by a cancellation of nonlinear and dispersive effects in the medium ...

s (with

Andrew Strominger Andrew Eben Strominger (; born 1955) is an American theoretical physicist who is the director of Harvard's Center for the Fundamental Laws of Nature. He has made significant contributions to quantum gravity and string theory. These include his w ...

and Rajesh Gopakumar) * OM-theory (with

and Rajesh Gopakumar) * Stringy interactions in pp-waves * Some insights about

tachyon condensation A tachyon () or tachyonic particle is a hypothetical particle that always travels faster than light. Physicists believe that faster-than-light particles cannot exist because they are not consistent with the known laws of physics. If such partic ...

* Dualities in supersymmetric gauge theories, in particular Chern-Simons-matter theories * Fluid-Gravity correspondence, the connections between hydrodynamics and AdS/CFT.(with Sayantani Bhattacharyya)

Personal life

Shiraz Minwalla lives in Mumbai with his wife and two children.

Selected works

References

External links

*
Shiraz Minwalla's articles in the INSPIRE-HEP database
{{DEFAULTSORT:Minwalla, Shiraz 21st-century Indian physicists Indian string theorists Princeton University alumni Harvard University faculty IIT Kanpur alumni Living people Indian theoretical physicists Tata Institute of Fundamental Research faculty Scientists from Mumbai TWAS laureates Parsi people from Mumbai Parsi people 1972 births