In an era when leaders such as the President of the United States of America Donald Trump are driven by ideological reasons rather than scientific fact, it is incumbent on scientists to educate the public about the power of science to solve critical problems, said Nobel laureate Kip Thorne during the Infosys Science Foundation Awards presentation ceremony on Wednesday.
At the ceremony, six persons were presented the awards for their contributions to science.
Mr. Thorne, who won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2017 for his work on gravitational waves, said the Nobel prize and awards such as these thrust scientists into becoming an ‘icon of science’ in the eyes of the general public.
"We scientists have an obligation to educate the public and our leaders about scientific fact and the power of science to resolve our problems. And this obligation is particularly strong on icons of science," said Mr. Thorne. “People like Trump don’t know the difference between truth and false... I think the world will look back on this as a very strange era having that kind of a leader."
He was, however, hopeful: “But, we'll get through this together."
He said it is ‘unfortunate’ for science funding to be predicated by its practical applications in the near future. "In many cases, they expect practical technologies from basic science in a few years. But for power technological applications, it will take decades of research to find applications," he said.
Two awards for NCBS work
Of the six awardees of the Infosys Science Award, two had conducted their pioneering research in the National Centre for Biological Science (NCBS). The awardees were selected by a jury that included Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, India’s former chief economic adviser Kaushik Basu, and molecular biologist Inder Verma.
In the Life Sciences category, NCBS neurobiologist Upinder Singh Bhalla was awarded for his work on understanding the brain’s computational machinery, particularly of the mammalian olfactory system.
Yamuna Krishnan from the Department of Chemistry in University of Chicago, who did pioneering work on DNA architecture and development of DNA nano-devices at NCBS, was awarded the 2017 Physical Sciences award. "NCBS is a very special institute, for you meet people who can make the extraordinary out of the ordinary. It is an institute that dares to dream," she said on receiving the award.
Other awardees included Sanghamitra Bandyopadhyay, director of Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, in the Engineering and Computer Sciences category for her work on computer algorithms that can analyse patterns, even in genomic sequence.
Lawrence Liang from the School of Law, Ambedkar University, Delhi, received the Social Sciences award for his ‘Creative Scholarship’ on law and society.
Ritabrata Munshi from Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, was the winner in the category of Mathematical Sciences, for his work on number theory, while Ananya J. Kabir was given the Humanities award.
The prize comes with a ₹65 lakh purse, a medal and a citation.
