Premala Chandra

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Premala "Premi" Chandra is an American theoretical condensed matter physicist whose research concerns the quantum mechanical and electromagnetic behavior of matter at the nanoscale, especially in two-dimensional surfaces. She is a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Rutgers University. [1]

Contents

Education and career

Chandra graduated summa cum laude from Yale University in 1981. [2] Despite a love for mathematics and science, and pressure from her mother to become a physician, she started her studies in history, but switched to physics after being persuaded by her mother that she was "just running away from what you love". [3] After graduating, she worked in industry as a research technician for Exxon for two years, and then continued her graduate studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. After visiting Princeton University under a UC Regents Fellowship, she completed her Ph.D. at UC Santa Barbara in 1988, [2] under the supervision of James S. Langer. [4]

Next, Chandra returned to Exxon as a postdoctoral researcher for two years. She became a research scientist at the NEC Research Institute in 1990, and a senior research scientist there in 2001. [2] The institute closed in late 2002, and was merged into a more applied laboratory that no longer focused on basic research. [5] Soon after, in 2003, Chandra took her present position as a professor at Rutgers University. [2]

Recognition

Chandra was elected as a Fellow of the American Physical Society, in the 2013 class of fellows, "for contributions to the theory of frustrated antiferromagnets and glasses, ferroelectrics and heavy fermion materials". [6]

Personal life

Chandra grew up in New Jersey, [7] as the elder of two daughters of Indian-American mathematical physicist Harish-Chandra and Lalitha "Lily" Kale. Kale, whose mother was a Polish Jew, was born in Warsaw but grew up in Bangalore after her family fled Poland in 1939 or 1940. [8] [3] As a child Chandra missed two years of schooling because of asthma, which she countered by athletics, first on a swim team and at Yale as a member of the crew team. [7] [3]

Chandra is married to Piers Coleman, a British physicist also affiliated with Rutgers University. [3]

References

  1. ↑ "Premala Chandra", Faculty, Rutgers Department of Physics and Astronomy, retrieved 2025-05-23
  2. 1 2 3 4 Curriculum vitae (PDF), 2025, retrieved 2025-05-23
  3. 1 2 3 4 "Lalitha Kale Harish-Chandra (1934–2019)", Bhāvanā: The mathematics magazine, vol. 3, no. 3, July 2019, retrieved 2025-05-23
  4. ↑ "Premala Chandra", Physics Tree, retrieved 2025-05-23
  5. ↑ Fortnow, Lance (November 3, 2003), "What happened at NEC?", Computational Complexity, retrieved 2025-05-23
  6. ↑ "Professor Premi Chandra has been elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society", 2014 News, Rutgers Department of Physics and Astronomy, January 23, 2014, retrieved 2025-05-23
  7. 1 2 Chandra, Premi, Thoughts on my physics life in progress (PDF), Louisiana State University, retrieved 2025-05-23
  8. ↑ Madhavan, Girija (February 16, 2024), "The grand wedding of 1950 in Mysore: When a Brilliant Mathematician wed a Graceful Mysorean at a grand hotel in a stylish manner", Star of Mysore, retrieved 2025-05-23
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