Mustansir Barma
Award Name : Padma Shri
Year of Award : 2013
Award for : Science and Engineering
Location : Mumbai, Maharashtra, India
Mustansir Barma is an Indian Scientist specializing in Statistical Physics. He was former Director of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. He was born on 27 December 1950 in Mumbai, India. Mustansir Barma did his undergraduate studies at St. Xavier's College, Mumbai and doctoral work at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. After post-doctoral work at Michigan State University, East Lansing, he joined the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai in 1976. He has been there ever since, except for sabbatical visits to Cornell University (1982-84) and the University of Oxford (1991-92). Professor Barma was the Chairman of the Department of Theoretical Physics (2004-07) Since 2007, he is the Director of TIFR.
Professor Barma's research is in the fields of
Statistical Physics and Condensed Matter Physics. His early work on spin models
of magnetism focused on low-temperature properties and on phase transitions and
critical point phenomena, while his research on percolation networks was
concerned with the effect of frozen-in randomness on disordered magnets and on
transport through a badly connected medium. He also worked on finite size
effects in Fermi systems, and their influence on the resonant response to
electromagnetic radiation. He has been working on the dynamics of deposition
and evaporation of bunches of particles, phase transitions in
aggregation-fragmentation systems, and on new types of phases which arise when
a system of interacting particles is subjected to a randomly fluctuating
potential. His recent interest is in the cooperative aspects of statistical
systems driven far from equilibrium. Barma was honoured with the INSA Medal for
Young Scientist Award (1980), SS Bhatnagar Prize (1995), DAE Raja Ramanna Prize
in Physics (2004) and SN Bose Birth Centenary Award of the Indian Science
Congress Association (2007). He is a Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences,
Bangalore, the National Academy of Sciences (India), Allahabad and the Academy
of Sciences for the Developing World (TWAS). Padma Shri Award (2013).