Sudhanshu Shekhar Jha (born 25 December 1940) is an Indian condensed matter physicist and a former director of

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 ...

. Known for his research in

optoelectronics Optoelectronics (or optronics) is the study and application of electronic devices and systems that find, detect and control light, usually considered a sub-field of photonics. In this context, ''light'' often includes invisible forms of radiatio ...

, Jha is an elected fellow of all the three major Indian science academies –

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 Academ ...

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 ...

and

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 ...

– as well as of

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 ...

and

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 Jha 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 ...

, one of the highest Indian science awards, for his contributions to Physical Sciences in 1979.

Biography

S. S. Jha, born on 25 December 1940 in Banka in the Indian state of Bihar, earned his BSc (hons) from

Patna Science College Patna Science College, established in 1927, is one of the oldest science colleges in Patna, Bihar. It is affiliated to Patna University, and offers undergraduate and postgraduate courses in science. History Patna Science College is an institut ...

of the

University of Patna Patna University is a public state university in Patna, Bihar, India. It was established on 1 October 1917 during the British Raj. It is the first university in Bihar and the seventh oldest university in the Indian subcontinent in the modern er ...

in 1957 and started his career by joining BARC Training School (then known as Atomic Research Establishment) as a trainee. In 1958, he joined

(TIFR) as a research assistant but taking a sabbatical from work, he moved to the US to pursue his higher studies. After obtaining an MS in physics and mathematics from

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 ...

in 1962, Jha continued there for his doctoral studies, mentored by

Felix Bloch Felix Bloch (23 October 1905 – 10 September 1983) was a Swiss-American physicist and Nobel physics laureate who worked mainly in the U.S. He and Edward Mills Purcell were awarded the 1952 Nobel Prize for Physics for "their development of ne ...

, the 1952

Nobel laureate The Nobel Prizes ( sv, Nobelpriset, no, Nobelprisen) are awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Swedish Academy, the Karolinska Institutet, and the Norwegian Nobel Committee to individuals and organizations who make out ...

to secure a PhD in 1965. Returning to India, he resumed his career at TIFR as a research fellow and in 1967, he joined

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 ...

to do his post-doctoral work at the laboratory of

Nicolaas Bloembergen Nicolaas Bloembergen (March 11, 1920 – September 5, 2017) was a Dutch-American physicist and Nobel laureate, recognized for his work in developing driving principles behind nonlinear optics for laser spectroscopy. During his career, he was a p ...

, who would also go on to win the

Nobel Prize in Physics ) , image = Nobel Prize.png , alt = A golden medallion with an embossed image of a bearded man facing left in profile. To the left of the man is the text "ALFR•" then "NOBEL", and on the right, the text (smaller) "NAT•" then " ...

in 1981. Jha spent two years in the US of which the first year was spent at Bloembergen's laboratory (1967–68) and the second at IBM Research Center. He returned to TIFR in 1969 and stayed at the institute till his superannuation in 2002 as the director. During this period, Jha held various positions as a reader, associate professor, professor, senior professor and a distinguished professor. Post-retirement, he worked as a distinguished guest professor at the

Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay The Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT Bombay or IITB) is a public research university and technical institute in Powai, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India. It is considered as one of the best engineering universities in India and is top ranked ...

from 2002 to 2012, and as a guest faculty at

Michigan State University Michigan State University (Michigan State, MSU) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in East Lansing, Michigan. It was founded in 1855 as the Agricultural College of the State of Michigan, the fi ...

and

Oklahoma State University Oklahoma (; Choctaw: ; chr, ᎣᎧᎳᎰᎹ, ''Okalahoma'' ) is a state in the South Central region of the United States, bordered by Texas on the south and west, Kansas on the north, Missouri on the northeast, Arkansas on the east, New ...

. Jha is associated with

Centre for Excellence in Basic Sciences Centre for Excellence in Basic Sciences () (or UM-DAE CEBS) is an autonomous institute with an affiliation to the University of Mumbai. It was set up in the University of Mumbai by the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) in collaboration with ...

, a collaborative initiative of the

University of Mumbai The University of Mumbai is a collegiate university, collegiate, State university (India), state-owned, Public university, public research university in Mumbai. The University of Mumbai is one of the largest universities in the world. , the un ...

and the

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 ...

as an honorary professor and lives at Seven Bungalows, in

Andheri Andheri ( �n̪d̪ʱeɾiː is a locality in the western part of the city of Mumbai in India. Udayanagari, the name of a hill near the Mahakali caves, inspired the name Andheri. On the former islet of Versova, also known as Vasave, there was ano ...

, a suburb of

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- ...

Legacy

Jha's research was focused on various aspects of solid state and plasma physics, especially

non linear optics Nonlinear optics (NLO) is the branch of optics that describes the behaviour of light in ''nonlinear media'', that is, media in which the polarization density P responds non-linearly to the electric field E of the light. The non-linearity is typic ...

. He is known to have carried out extensive work on

Raman scattering Raman scattering or the Raman effect () is the inelastic scattering of photons by matter, meaning that there is both an exchange of energy and a change in the light's direction. Typically this effect involves vibrational energy being gained by a ...

which covered electronic exs in solids, laser beams,

superconductivity Superconductivity is a set of physical properties observed in certain materials where electrical resistance vanishes and magnetic flux fields are expelled from the material. Any material exhibiting these properties is a superconductor. Unlike ...

in layered

semimetals A semimetal is a material with a very small overlap between the bottom of the conduction band and the top of the valence band. According to electronic band theory, solids can be classified as insulators, semiconductors, semimetals, or metals. ...

Excitons An exciton is a bound state of an electron and an electron hole which are attracted to each other by the electrostatic Coulomb force. It is an electrically neutral quasiparticle that exists in insulators, semiconductors and some liquids. The ...

as well as

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 has investigated the processes occur on a small space within a short time span, using

Raman spectroscopy Raman spectroscopy () (named after Indian physicist C. V. Raman) is a spectroscopic technique typically used to determine vibrational modes of molecules, although rotational and other low-frequency modes of systems may also be observed. Raman sp ...

. Jha's work assisted in developing the theory related to wave-wave interactions in a

plasma Plasma or plasm may refer to: Science * Plasma (physics), one of the four fundamental states of matter * Plasma (mineral), a green translucent silica mineral * Quark–gluon plasma, a state of matter in quantum chromodynamics Biology * Blood pla ...

and also contributed in refining

thermonuclear fusion Thermonuclear fusion is the process of atomic nuclei combining or “fusing” using high temperatures to drive them close enough together for this to become possible. There are two forms of thermonuclear fusion: ''uncontrolled'', in which the re ...

studies. His studies have been documented by way of a number of articles and the article repository of the

has listed 127 of them. He has also supervised the work of a number of doctoral scholars. Jha was a member of the scientific advisory committee to the cabinet of the

Union Government 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 ...

during 1997–98 and sat in two of the commissions of the

International Union of Pure and Applied Physics The International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP ) is an international non-governmental organization whose mission is to assist in the worldwide development of physics, to foster international cooperation in physics, and to help in the ...

(IUPAP). He chaired ''PhD Graduate School Committee'' of

from 1969 to 1974, the ''Board of Research in Nuclear Sciences'' (BRNS) of the

from 1993 to 1997, the governing council of the

Institute of Physics, Bhubaneswar Institute of Physics, Bhubaneswar ( or, ପଦାର୍ଥ ବିଜ୍ଞାନ ଅନୁଷ୍ଠାନ) is an autonomous research institution of the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), Government of India. The institute was founded by Profes ...

from 2001 to 2007 and the Consortium of the

University Grants Commission of India University Grants Commission (UGC) is a statutory body set up by the Department of Higher Education (India), Department of Higher Education, Ministry of Human Resource Development (India), Ministry of Education, Government of India in accordan ...

and the Department of Atomic Energy for Scientific Research during the period 2002–08. Jha was a member of the council of the Indian Academy of Sciences from 1989 to 1994 of which he served as the vice president from 1989 to 1991. He was associated with the Indo-French Centre for the Promotion of Advanced Research (IFCPAR) from 1993 to 1996 as a member of its scientific council and has been a member of the governing council of

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. ...

for six years between 1998 and 2004. Jha is a board member of the

Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai The Institute of Mathematical Sciences (IMSc) (sometimes also referred to as ''Matscience'') is a research centre located in Chennai, India.R. Jagannathan, ''The Institute of Mathematical Sciences'', Resonance (January 1999) vol. 4, no. 1, pp. ...

, and has been associated with the Indian National Science Academy as a council member for the term 1999–2001 and with the ''Centre for Nano and Soft Matter Sciences'' (CeNS) as a governing council member.

Awards and honors

The

elected Jha as their fellow in 1974 and five years later, 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 1979' the same year as he became a fellow of the

. He received the C. V. Raman Birth Centenary Medal in 1988 and the year 1989 brought him the elected fellowships of the

and the

. The Indian National Science Academy honored Jha again with the Satyendranath Bose Bose Medal in 1992. He was elected as a fellow by the Maharashtra Academy of Sciences and a year later, he became a fellow of

. The

Indian Science Congress Association Indian Science Congress Association(ISCA) is a premier scientific organisation of India with headquarters at Kolkata, West Bengal. The association started in the year 1914 in Kolkata and it meets annually in the first week of January. It has a ...

selected Jha for the 2001–02 C. V. Raman Birth Centenary Award and the award orations delivered by him include the 1991 Jawaharlal Nehru Birth Centenary lecture of the Indian National Science Academy.

Selected bibliography

* * * * *

Notes

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Jha, Sudhanshu Shekhar 1940 births People from Banka, Bihar Indian condensed matter physicists Scientists from Bihar Indian scientific authors Patna University alumni Tata Institute of Fundamental Research faculty Stanford University alumni Harvard University alumni IIT Bombay faculty Michigan State University faculty Oklahoma State University faculty Recipients of the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award in Medical Science Fellows of the Indian Academy of Sciences Fellows of the Indian National Science Academy Fellows of The National Academy of Sciences, India TWAS fellows Fellows of the American Physical Society Living people