Vigyan Ratna Award | |
---|---|
Country | India |
Presented by | President of India |
Established | 21 September 2023 |
First awarded | 22 August 2024 |
Last awarded | 2024 Govindarajan Padmanaban |
Total | 1 |
The Vigyan Ratna Award is the highest honour conferred by the Government of India for outstanding achievements in science, technology, and innovation. [1] Established in 2023 and first awarded in 2024, the award recognizes individuals for their lifetime contributions to the field of science and technology. [2] Often regarded as the Indian equivalent of the Nobel Prize, the Vigyan Ratna is part of the Rashtriya Vigyan Puraskar scheme, which also includes three other awards — Vigyan Shri, Vigyan Yuva-Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar, and Vigyan Team. [3]
A maximum of three individuals are selected each year to receive the Vigyan Ratna Award. Nominations are invited annually from 14 January to 28 February, coinciding with National Science Day. The award recipients are announced on 11 May, National Technology Day, and the awards are presented on 23 August, National Space Day. [1] [4]
In its inaugural year, the Vigyan Ratna Award was awarded to Govindarajan Padmanabhan, a biochemist renowned for his work on the malaria parasite. This recognition highlighted his lifetime achievements in the field of biological sciences. [5]
Presidency College is an art, commerce, and science college in the city of Chennai in Tamil Nadu, India. On 16 October 1840, this school was established as the Madras Preparatory School before being repurposed as a high school, and then a graduate college. The Presidency College is one of the oldest government arts colleges in India. It is one of two Presidency Colleges established by the British in India, the other being the Presidency College, Kolkata.
The Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology (SSB) was a science award in India given annually by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) for notable and outstanding research, applied or fundamental, in biology, chemistry, environmental science, engineering, mathematics, medicine, and physics. The prize recognized outstanding Indian work in science and technology. It was the highest, most prestigious and coveted prize given in the area of multidisciplinary science in India. The award was named after the founder Director of the Council of Scientific & Industrial Research, Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar. It was first awarded in 1958.
Madurai Kamaraj University (MKU) is a public state university located in Madurai city, in southern Tamil Nadu, India, that was established in 1966. MKU is one of the 15 universities in India with the University with Potential for Excellence status, which was awarded by the University Grants Commission (UGC) in India. In 2021, the university was awarded an 'A++' grade from the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) in its 4th cycle.
The Indian honours system is the system of awards given to individuals for a variety of services to the Republic of India. The categories of awards are as follows:
Govindarajan Padmanaban is an Indian biochemist and biotechnologist. He was the former director of the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), and presently serves as honorary professor in the department of biochemistry at IISc and Chancellor of Central University of Tamil Nadu.
The Pradhan Mantri Rashtriya Bal Puraskar, formerly called the National Child Award for Exceptional Achievement, is India’s highest civilian honour for children, awarded annually by the Ministry of Women and Child Development.
Vallampadugai Srinivasa Raghavan Arunachalam was an Indian scientist and former head of Defence Research & Development Organization (DRDO). He was the founder and chairman of CSTEP, a science and technology think tank.
Dr. Syed Wajih Ahmad Naqvi is an Indian marine scientist and the former director of the National Institute of Oceanography. His work has concentrated in oceanic water chemistry, biogeochemistry, and chemical interrelations with living organisms. He has also performed research on freshwater ecosystems. He was the chief Indian scientist of LOHAFEX, an ocean iron fertilization experiment jointly planned by the Council of Scientific Industrial Research (CSIR), India, and Helmholtz Foundation, Germany.
Annapurni Subramaniam is the director of the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bangalore and works on areas like star clusters, stellar evolution and population in galaxies and Magellanic clouds.
Neena Gupta is a professor at the Statistics and Mathematics Unit of the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), Kolkata. Her primary fields of interest are commutative algebra and affine algebraic geometry.
Jayant Bhalchandra Udgaonkar is a former Director and Professor of Biology at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Pune. Despite any actual scientific achievement, he has nevertheless established himself as a prominent protein-folding scientist among the Indian scientific community. However, there is not a single reference on the protein folding page to his name. In 2016, the Biophysical Journal published a retraction notice citing evidence of manipulation via duplication, mirroring, and rescaling of identical data in one of his papers.
Umesh Varshney is an Indian molecular biologist, academician and the head of a laboratory at the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru. He is a J. C. Bose National Fellow of the Department of Science and Technology and is known for his studies on protein synthesis and DNA repair in Escherichia coli and Mycobacterium tuberculosis. An elected fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences, Indian National Science Academy and the National Academy of Sciences (India), he is also a recipient of the National Bioscience Award for Career Development of the Government of India. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, one of the highest Indian science awards, in 2001, and then in 2014 with the G. N. Ramachandran Gold Medal for Excellence in Biological Sciences & Technology for his contributions to biological sciences.
Jhillu Singh Yadav is an Indian organic chemist and the co-founder of the Indo-French Joint Laboratory for Sustainable Chemistry at Interfaces (JLSCI), jointly established by the Indian Institute of Chemical Technology and the University of Rennes 1. He is a former director of Indian Institute of Chemical Technology (IICT) and is known for his studies on organic syntheses of allylic and acetylenic alcohols and spiroacetals. He is an elected fellow of the Indian National Science Academy, the Indian Academy of Sciences National Academy of Sciences, India, Indian Institute of Chemical Engineers and The World Academy of Sciences. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, one of the highest Indian science awards, in 1991, for his contributions to chemical sciences.
Subramania Ranganathan (1934–2016), popularly known as Ranga, was an Indian bioorganic chemist and professor and head of the department of chemistry at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur. He was known for his studies on synthetic and mechanistic organic chemistry and was an elected fellow Indian National Science Academy, National Academy of Sciences, India and the Indian Academy of Sciences The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, one of the highest Indian science awards, in 1977, for his contributions to chemical sciences.
Janardan Ganpatrao Negi was an Indian theoretical geophysicist and emeritus scientist at National Geophysical Research Institute.
Rajinder Kumar is an Indian chemical engineer and a former professor at the Indian Institute of Science. He is known for his studies on multiphase phenomena and is an elected fellow of the Indian National Science Academy, Indian Academy of Sciences, and the Indian National Academy of Engineering. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, one of the highest Indian science awards for his contributions to Engineering Sciences in 1976. He received the third highest Indian civilian award of the Padma Bhushan in 2003. He is also a recipient of Om Prakash Bhasin Award and the VASVIK Industrial Research Award.
Venkata Narayana Padmanabhan is a computer scientist and principal researcher at Microsoft Research India. He is known for his research in networked and mobile systems. He is an elected fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the Association for Computing Machinery. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, one of the highest Indian science awards for his contributions to Engineering Sciences in 2016.
Rohit Srivastava is a Himanshu Patel Chair Professor in the Department of Biosciences and Bioegineering at IIT Bombay specialising in medical diagnostic devices, nanoengineered materials and photothermal cancer therapy. He was awarded the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology in Medical Sciences in the year 2021 for his contributions to the development of affordable medical devices.
Rashtriya Vigyan Puraskar is a National Award instituted by the Government of India to recognize the contributions of outstanding researchers in the fields of science, technology and innovation.