SPECIAL/SCIENTISTS SHINE
Three among country’s top
scientists and innovators are
Indian American too
Professor Srinivasa S R Varadhan
Professor Rakesh Agrawal
Professor B Jayant Baliga
AZIZ HANIFFA
One day after he named the awardees for
the Presidential Early Career Scientists
honors, which included three Indian
Americans, President Barack Obama
named his Honors List for the Nation’s Top
Scientists and Innovators, which also
included three Indian Americans.
Among the seven eminent researchers
named recipients of the National Medal of
Science was Srinivasa S R Varadhan, 71,
professor of mathematics at New York
University. Among the five inventors
named as recipients of the National Medal
of Technology and Innovation were Rakesh
Agrawal, 57, Winthrop E Stone Distinguished Professor, School of Chemical
Engineering, Purdue University; and B
Jayant Baliga, Distinguished University
Professor of electrical and computer engineering and founding director of the Power
Semiconductor Research Center, North
Carolina State University.
The National Medal of Science and the
National Medal of Technology and
Innovation are the highest honors
bestowed by the United States government
on scientists, engineers, and inventors. The
recipients will receive their awards at a
White House ceremony later this year.
Obama said, ‘Each of these extraordinary
scientists, engineers, and inventors is guid-
ed by a passion for innovation, a fearless-
ness even as they explore the very frontiers
of human knowledge, and a desire to make
the world a better place.’
The annual National Medal of Science,
created by statute in 1959 and adminis-
tered for the White House by the National
Science Foundation, recognizes individuals
who have made outstanding contributions
to science and engineering. Nominees are
selected by a committee of presidential
appointees based on their knowledge in
and contributions to chemistry, engineer-
ing, computing, mathematics, and the bio-
logical, behavioral/social, and physical sci-
ences.
Varadhan is the Frank Jay Gould
Professor of Science and professor of mathematics at NYU’s Courant Institute of
Mathematical Sciences. His scholarship
has centered on the theory of large deviations — the probability of rare events. His
contributions have provided a method for
understanding a range of phenomena and
his work has been employed in fields
including finance, traffic engineering, and
biology.
In 2007, he was awarded the Abel Prize
in Mathematics by the Norwegian
Academy of Science and Letters for ‘his
fundamental contributions to probability
theory,’ which the academy characterized as
‘hugely influential’ and lauded for its ‘great
conceptual strength and ageless beauty’.
Varadhan is one of three Courant mathematicians to win the Abel Prize, which
many consider to be the Nobel Prize of
mathematics.
He is a member of the National Academy
of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts
and Sciences, the Royal Society and the
Third World Academy of Sciences. The
honors he has won include the Birkhoff
Prize (1994), the Margaret and Herman
Sokol Award of NYU’s Faculty of Arts and
Science (1995), and the American
Mathematical Society’s Leroy Steele Prize
(1996), an Alfred P Sloan Fellowship, and a
Guggenheim Fellowship. He is a fellow of
the Institute of Mathematical Statistics and
the Indian Academy of Sciences.
Varadhan received his BSc and MA from
Madras University, and his PhD from the
Indian Statistical Institute in Calcutta,
under Calyampudi R Rao, who arranged
for the noted Russian mathematician
Andrey Kolmogorov to be present at
Varadhan’s thesis defense. Varadhan first
came to Courant as a post-doctoral fellow
in 1963 and has spent his entire professional life there, serving two terms as its director. In 2008, the government of India
awarded him the Padma Bhushan, one of
the country’s highest civilian honors. His
wife, Vasundra Varadhan, is also an academic, in media studies at the Gallatin
School of Individualized Study. In the 9/11
terror attacks, the Varadhans lost a son.
Their other son, Ashok, is a trader in New
York.
Ara, Bihar-born Agrawal spent his early
childhood in Ara and Mirzapur, Uttar
Pradesh, did his early schooling in
Dehradun, and then went to the Indian
Institute of Technology-Kanpur. His father,
Girdhar Lal Agarwal, who retired as a gen-
eral manager of the Oil Natural Gas
Commission of India, still lives in
Dehradun. Agrawal told India Abroad that
his father “was thrilled to hear the news of
my award.”
Agrawal’s mother, Bimla Agarwal, passed
away two years ago.
Agrawal said he came to the US in 1975,
“immediately after graduating from IIT-
Kanpur. I went to the University of
Delaware first and then to MIT.”
He credited much of his success to “my
lovely wife Manju and my sons Udit and
Numit. They have been the pillars of my life
and I cannot imagine what I would do or
have done without their support. The
honor really belongs to my wife who has
