Jainendra K. Jain (born 1960) is an Indian-American

physicist A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate caus ...

and the Evan Pugh University Professor and Erwin W. Mueller Professor of

Physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which r ...

Pennsylvania State University The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State or PSU) is a Public university, public Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related Land-grant university, land-grant research university with campuses and facilities throughout Pennsylvan ...

. He is also Infosys Chair Visiting Professor at IISc, Bangalore. Jain is known for his theoretical work on quantum many body systems, most notably for postulating particles known as

Composite Fermions A composite fermion is the topological bound state of an electron and an even number of quantized vortices, sometimes visually pictured as the bound state of an electron and, attached, an even number of magnetic flux quanta. Composite fermions we ...

Biography

Born in 1960, Jain received his primary, middle and high school education in a government school in a rural village called

Sambhar, Rajasthan Sambhar (officially known as Sambhar Lake Town) is a town and a municipality in Jaipur district in the Indian state of Rajasthan. It is surrounded by the Sambhar Salt Lake. Sambhar is approximately 70 km from Jaipur (NH-8, RJ SH 57) and ...

, located at the eastern margin of Thar desert in India. He received bachelor's degree at

Maharaja College, Jaipur University Maharaja's College is a college in Jaipur, the capital of the Rajasthan state in India. Established in 1844 by Sawai Ram Singh II, it has been affiliated with University of Rajasthan since 1947. Maharaja college offers course on campu ...

, his master's degree in physics at

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 ...

and PhD at the

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 system's ...

under the supervision of Prof. Philip B. Allen. After working as a post-doctoral researcher at the

University of Maryland The University of Maryland, College Park (University of Maryland, UMD, or simply Maryland) is a public land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland. Founded in 1856, UMD is the flagship institution of the University System of M ...

and the

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

he returned to the

as a faculty in 1989. In 1998 he moved to the

as the first Erwin W. Mueller Professor of Physics. In 2012, Penn State University awarded Jain with

Evan Pugh Evan Pugh (February 29, 1828 – April 29, 1864) was the first president of the Pennsylvania State University, serving from 1859 until his death in 1864. An agricultural chemist, he was responsible for securing Penn State's designation in 1863 a ...

University Professorship, named after the first president of the university. Jain is a quantum physicist in the field of

condensed matter theory Condensed matter physics is the field of physics that deals with the macroscopic and microscopic physical properties of matter, especially the solid and liquid phases which arise from electromagnetic forces between atoms. More generally, the su ...

with interests in the area of strongly interacting electronic systems in low dimensions. As the originator of the exotic particles called

composite fermions A composite fermion is the topological bound state of an electron and an even number of quantized vortices, sometimes visually pictured as the bound state of an electron and, attached, an even number of magnetic flux quanta. Composite fermions we ...

, he developed the composite fermion theory of the

fractional quantum Hall effect The fractional quantum Hall effect (FQHE) is a physical phenomenon in which the Hall conductance of 2-dimensional (2D) electrons shows precisely quantized plateaus at fractional values of e^2/h. It is a property of a collective state in which elec ...

and unified the fractional and the integral quantum Hall effects. His writings include a monograph ''Composite Fermions'', published in 2007 by the

Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press is the university press of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by Henry VIII of England, King Henry VIII in 1534, it is the oldest university press A university press is an academic publishing hou ...

. Jain was a co-recipient of the Oliver E. Buckley Prize 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 ...

in 2002, along with

Nicholas Read Nicholas Read is an American physicist, noted for his work on strongly interacting quantum many-body systems. Biography Read was born in Britain in 1958 and did his undergraduate education at Cambridge University. He completed his PhD at the ...

and Robert Willett "For theoretical and experimental work establishing the composite fermion model for the half-filled Landau level and other quantized Hall systems". He is a Fellow of the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and ...

American Association for the Advancement of Science The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is an American international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific respons ...

, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and

John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation was founded in 1925 by Olga and Simon Guggenheim in memory of their son, who died on April 26, 1922. The organization awards Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been ...

. In 2021, he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Jain, Jainendra K. 20th-century Indian physicists Scientists from Rajasthan IIT Kanpur alumni Stony Brook University alumni Stony Brook University faculty Pennsylvania State University faculty American Jains Living people Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Prize winners American academics of Indian descent Fellows of the American Physical Society 1960 births Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences American people of Indian descent Indian American Indian scholars