Rajesh Gopakumar (born 1967 in

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 ...

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

) is a

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 experime ...

and the director of the International Centre for Theoretical Sciences (ICTS-TIFR) in

Bangalore Bangalore (), List of renamed places in India, officially Bengaluru (), is the Capital city, capital and largest city of the Indian state of Karnataka. It has a population of more than and a metropolitan area, metropolitan population of a ...

, India. He was previously a professor at Harish-Chandra Research Institute (HRI) in

Prayagraj Allahabad (), officially known as Prayagraj, also known as Ilahabad, is a metropolis in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.The other five cities were: Agra, Kanpur (Cawnpore), Lucknow, Meerut, and Varanasi (Benares). It is the administrat ...

, India. He is known for his work on

topological string theory In theoretical physics, topological string theory is a version of string theory. Topological string theory appeared in papers by theoretical physicists, such as Edward Witten and Cumrun Vafa, by analogy with Witten's earlier idea of topological ...

Background

Gopakumar was born in 1967 to Jaishree and G. Gopakumar in Kolkata. His family hails from the southern Indian state of

Kerala Kerala ( ; ) is a state on the Malabar Coast of India. It was formed on 1 November 1956, following the passage of the States Reorganisation Act, by combining Malayalam-speaking regions of the erstwhile regions of Cochin, Malabar, South ...

. He has the distinction of being ranked 1 in the entrance examination for IIT in 1987. Gopakumar obtained his integrated M.Sc. degree in

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 ...

from the

IIT 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 1992. He completed his Ph.D. from

Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...

in 1997 under the supervision of

David Gross David Jonathan Gross (; born February 19, 1941) is an American theoretical physicist and string theorist. Along with Frank Wilczek and David Politzer, he was awarded the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics for their discovery of asymptotic freedom. ...

. After a few years as a research associate 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 high ...

, he joined HRI in 2001. He was also a visiting fellow at the

Institute for Advanced Study The Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), located in Princeton, New Jersey, in the United States, is an independent center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. It has served as the academic home of internationally preeminent schola ...

Princeton, New Jersey Princeton is a municipality with a borough form of government in Mercer County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. It was established on January 1, 2013, through the consolidation of the Borough of Princeton and Princeton Township, both of whi ...

from 2001 to 2004. He is married to Rukmini Dey, a Professor of Mathematical Physics and Geometry at ICTS-TIFR.

Research

Gopakumar is a

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 ...

. Early in his career, his research was primarily focused on large N gauge theories with

, noncommutative gauge theories 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 ...

and

Shiraz Minwalla Shiraz Naval Minwalla (born January 2, 1972) is an Indian theoretical physicist and string theorist. He is a faculty member in the Department of Theoretical Physics at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai. Prior to his present positio ...

, and

and gauge/geometry correspondence with

Cumrun Vafa Cumrun Vafa ( fa, کامران وفا ; born 1 August 1960) is an Iranian-American theoretical physicist and the Hollis Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy at Harvard University. Early life and education Cumrun Vafa was born in Tehra ...

and is particularly known for proposing the Gopakumar–Vafa duality and

Gopakumar–Vafa invariant In theoretical physics, Rajesh Gopakumar and Cumrun Vafa introduced in a series of papers new topological invariants, called Gopakumar–Vafa invariants, that represent the number of BPS states on a Calabi–Yau manifold, Calabi–Yau 3-fold. They ...

s. Later, his work focussed on attempts to derive the AdS/CFT correspondence, and on minimal model holography (with Matthias Gaberdiel). In recent years, he has made important contributions to higher spin theories and their connections with string theory (with Matthias Gaberdiel). He has also recently worked on the

Conformal bootstrap The conformal bootstrap is a non-perturbative mathematical method to constrain and solve Conformal field theory, conformal field theories, i.e. models of particle physics or statistical physics that exhibit similar properties at different levels of ...

Awards

Gopakumar was awarded the 2004 B.M. Birla Science Prize in Physics. He received the 2006 ICTP Prize. He received the

Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award The Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology (SSB) is a science award in India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-la ...

in 2009. He was named Fellow of the Global Young Academy of Scientists for 2010. He is a member of the

Indian National Science Academy The Indian National Science Academy (INSA) is a national academy in New Delhi for Indian scientists in all branches of science and technology. In August 2019, Dr. Chandrima Shaha was appointed as the president of Indian National Science Acade ...

, and 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 meet ...

.GYA member listing
, retrieved 2011-03-23. He received

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 in 2013.

Selected publications

* *
List of R. Gopakumar's Publications

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gopakumar, Rajesh 1967 births Living people 20th-century Indian physicists Indian string theorists Recipients of the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award in Physical Science IIT Kanpur alumni Scientists from Kolkata TWAS laureates