Three Indian names are on the list of fifty scientists elected as Fellows of The Royal Society, a premier scientific academy of the U.K. and the Commonwealth. Physicist Sriram Ramaswamy, Director of TIFR Centre for Interdisciplinary Sciences, Hyderabad; biochemist Ramanujan Hegde, MRC Laboratory of Microbiology, U.K. and applied mathematician Lakshminarayanan Mahadevan, Harvard University have earned the top honour.
Sriram Ramaswamy, who is on leave from the Indian Institute of Science, works on two broad areas: Collective movement of self-propelled (“active”) matter through fluids and non-living imitations of self-propulsion.
Prof. Ramaswamy said, “I’m delighted at this recognition of the value of the research that my co-workers and I have been doing. And I’m proud that Indian groups have been leaders in this area from its inception. I am optimistic that this Fellowship will give greater visibility to fundamental science in India.”
Describing his work on active matter in fluids, Prof. Ramaswamy said, “Using only general physical principles, we build equations that predict the nature of flows and fluctuations in active-particle systems on a wide range of scales — within a living cell, in collections of swimming microorganisms and, in principle, in fish schools.”
While IIT-Madras alumnus L. Mahadevan’s work attempts to understand the geometrical and dynamic patterns of shape and flow in physical and biological systems, Ramanujan “Manu” Hegde’s work shows that even modest failures of proteins to reach their correct cellular destination could lead to neurodegeneration, which cells avoid by targeting the proteins.
Since the Royal Society’s foundation in 1660, about 8,000 Fellows have been elected, with persons of Indian origin numbering about 60. Srinivasa Ramanujan was the second Indian to be inducted, in 1918, the first being Ardaseer Cursetjee, an engineer, in 1841, according to a report in Current Science.
The Royal Society elects new Fellows and Foreign Members every year. Candidates must have made “a substantial contribution to the improvement of natural knowledge, including mathematics, engineering science and medical science”.
The Society, said to be the oldest scientific academy in continuous existence, states that its mission is to recognise, promote, and support excellence in science and to encourage the development and use of science for the benefit of humanity.
