Hall of Fame

Prof. Trilochan Pradhan was born in the Ghanashalia village of Nayagarh district of Odisha on 01.02.1929. He did his Ph.D. in 1956 under the supervision of M. Goldberger from the University of Chicago. He was a faculty member at Ravenshaw College from 1951-53 and 1958-62. Subsequently, he joined the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, Kolkata. In 1974, he joined the newly formed Institute of Physics, Bhubaneswar as its first Director. Through his efforts, in 1985, the Institute was taken over by the Department of Atomic Energy as an aided institute. From 1989-1991, he was the Vice Chancellor of Utkal University. Prof. Pradhan has been recognized for his work with many awards, including the Padma Bhushan conferred by Govt. of India in 1990.

Prof. Siba Prasad Misra was born on 12th January, 1934 in the undivided Puri district of Odisha.  Prof. Misra was the Officiating Director of the Institute for short periods (four months in 1985 and nine months in 1989).  During the first period, he arranged a computer (for the first time) to the Institute, and during the second period, this facility was upgraded by more than a factor of twenty.  In the latter period, also played a significant role in setting up the Pelletron Accelerator facility in the Institute of Physics.

Valangiman Subramanian Ramamurthy (born 2 April 1942) is an Indian nuclear physicist with a broad range of contributions from basic research to Science and Engineering administration. Prof. Ramamurthy started his career in Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Mumbai in the year 1963. He made important research contributions in the area of nuclear fission, medium energy heavy ion reactions, statistical and thermodynamic properties of nuclei and low energy accelerator applications. During the period 1995-2006, Prof.Ramamurthy was fully involved in Science administration as Secretary to Government of India , Department of Science and Technology, (DST), New Delhi.Other important assignments held by him include Director, Institute of Physics, Bhubaneswar, (1989-1995), DAE Homi Bhabha Chair in the Inter-University Accelerator Centre, New Delhi (2006-2010), and Director of the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru (2009-2014). [1][2] He is a former chairman of the Recruitment and Assessment Board of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research and has served as a member of the design team of the first Indian nuclear experiment in Pokhran on 18 May 1974.[3] The Government of India awarded him the third highest Indian civilian honour of Padma Bhushan in 2005.[4]

Professor Sudhakar Panda was born at Tentei in Balasore district of Odisha on 23rd February 1959. He obtained the Ph.D. in the research area of High Energy Physics from Institute of Physics through Utkal University, Bhubaneswar in the year 1988. His main research interests are Quantum Field Theory, String Theory and String Cosmology. He was the Professor at Harish-Chandra Research Institute, Allahabad prior to joining the post of Director of the Institute. He was fellow of three national Academies of India, viz. New Delhi, Allabahad and Bangalore and the J.C.Bose National Fellow. He was also the recipient of Biju Patnaik Award by DST, Govt. of Odisha.

Prof. Karuna Kar Nanda was born in the Khatakhatia village of Boudh district on 01.06.1967. He assumed the post of Director, Institute of Physics, Bhubaneswar from 16.06.2021. He obtained his Ph.D. from Institute of Physics, Bhubaneswar only. He held Guest Scientist position at the Gerhard-Mercator University, Duisburg, Germany and Post-Doctoral position at The Dublin City University, Dublin, Ireland. He has been a faculty member of Materials Research Centre, Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore since 2005. He became the Chairman of Materials Research Centre, IISc, Bangalore in 2018. He is known for his research in the fields of Condensed Matter Physics, Materials Science and Nanoscience. He has mentored around 27 Ph.D. students, several Post-doctoral Fellows and published around 300 journal papers in the reputed International Journals and having a h-index 50 and Citations of more than 10005. Prof. Nanda has developed a liquid-drop model for the size-dependent melting of nanostructured materials that has been highly cited (~ 701 times). This work has been cited in WIKIPEDIA and is also being taught to BS students of University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany as a part of their course. His work on "Electrical properties of 1N4007 silicon diode" that deals with the methodology for the evaluation of band gap of semiconductor can be adopted for practical courses. He has also developed an effective mass model to understand the size and dimensionality dependent band gap of nanostructured materials that has also been well appreciated. Prof. Nanda was honored with many awards, viz. Samanta Chandrasekhar Award for the year 2006 by the Odisha Bigyan Academy, Govt. of Odisha; Materials Research Society of India Lecture Medal for the year 2010, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Fellowship for the year 2013-14 and Prof. N.N.Dasgupta Memorial Award, 2023 by the Indian Photobiology Society, Jadavpur University, Kolkata for his pioneering contributions in the area of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, especially on the applications in sensing and catalysis. He has also been honored with Adjunct Professorship of Gangadhar Meher University, Sambalpur from 05.01.2024 and is a Fellow of International Association of Advanced Materials, Sweden. He has been selected as one of the World's Top 2% Scientists, the survey released by Stanford University.