37 Indian scientists among recipients of the LIGO teams to get $3 million prize

Breakthrough Prizes recognize the world’s top scientists.

By Sreekanth A. Nair

Thirty-seven Indians are among the scientists at Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) experiment who won the prestigious $3 million Special Breakthrough Prize in fundamental physics.

The Selection Committee of the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics announced on Tuesday a Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics recognizing scientists and engineers contributing to the momentous detection of gravitational waves, which was announced in February of this year.

The $3 million award will be shared between two groups of laureates: the three founders of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), who will each equally share $1 million; and 1012 contributors to the experiment, who will each equally share $2 million.

TIFR-Mumbai, IUCAA, Pune, IISER Kolkata, IISER Trivandrum, IIT Gandhinagar, RRI Bengaluru, and ICTS Bengaluru are the institutions from India that have participated in LIGO.

“The analysis that they lead within the LIGO scientific Collaboration was one of the handfuls of tests used to establish the consistency of the observed signal with that coming from a binary black hole system predicted by Einstein’s theory,” ICTS said in a statement.

Stephen Hawking, who won the Special Breakthrough Prize in 2013, said, “This discovery has huge significance: firstly, as evidence for general relativity and its predictions of black hole interactions, and secondly as the beginning of a new astronomy that will reveal the universe through a different medium. The LIGO team richly deserves the Special Breakthrough Prize.”

The Breakthrough Prizes recognize the world’s top scientists. Each prize is $3 million and presented in the fields of Life Sciences (up to five per year), Fundamental Physics (up to one per year) and Mathematics (up to one per year). In addition, up to three New Horizons in Physics and up to three New Horizons in Mathematics Prizes are given out to junior researchers each year.