The Dirac Medal is awarded to physicists who have made outstanding contributions to theoretical physics but who have not already received the very top honours, especially the Nobel Prizes.

The story so far: Theoretical physicist Deepak Dhar has been awarded the Dirac Medal for his contributions to statistical physics — an honour he is sharing with three other physicists, Bernard Derrida, Marc Mézard, and Haim Sompolinsky. The Dirac Medal is awarded by the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) in Trieste, Italy, on the birthday of the late British physicist Paul A.M. Dirac, for significant contributions to theoretical physics.

Dhar has spent most of his career in India. He is also the second Indian winner of the Dirac Medal; the first was string theorist Ashoke Sen in 2012.

In physics circles, Dhar is known for his work on a concept called Abelian sandpiles.

What is an Abelian sandpile?

Imagine dropping grains of sand, one at a time, on a flat surface. The pile slowly grows until it gets steep enough. Then, sometimes new grains on the pile will shift it, maybe cause a modest slide, sometimes even trigger an avalanche. And it is hard to predict in advance which grain will trigger which size of event.

In the late 1980s, physicists Per Bak, Chao Tang, and Kurt Wiesenfeld proposed that this behaviour could be a general principle underlying many phenomena in nature, from earthquakes to forest fires to the extinction of species. They called it self-organised criticality. The term refers to a system that sometimes organises itself into a delicately balanced critical state where even small nudges can produce effects of any size, from trivial to significant.

Dhar and his collaborators then developed the so-called Abelian sandpile model as a mathematical version of the sandpile idea. ‘Abelian’ means no matter in which sequence grains topple and cascade, the pile always settles into the same final shape. This was Dhar’s important insight — a property that lets physicists calculate exact answers and thus predict the final shape.

The Abelian sandpile model has numerous applications fundamentally because it captures a very general kind of behaviour: of systems that build up some kind of instability until they can release it in unpredictable ways. Scientists have used it to model earthquakes, the spread of forest fires, bursts of activity in neural networks in the brain, and fluctuations in financial markets.

Biographical sketch

Dhar was born in 1951 in Pratapgarh, Uttar Pradesh. He studied at Allahabad University, got his master’s degree from IIT-Kanpur, and then went to the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) for his PhD, which he completed in 1978. While at Caltech, he was a teaching assistant to Richard Feynman.

After finishing his doctorate, Dhar returned to India rather than stay in the U.S., and spent most of his career at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, before moving to the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Pune, in 2016.

Since 2024, he has been the INSA Distinguished Professor at the International Centre for Theoretical Sciences, Bengaluru.

The Abelian sandpile is Dhar’s most well-known work but not his only one. Across nearly five decades, Dhar has made important contributions to statistical mechanics — the branch of physics concerned with how the collective behaviour of vast numbers of particles, like grains or neurons, gives rise to large-scale patterns.

He won the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize in 1991, the TWAS Prize from the World Academy of Sciences in 2002, the Padma Bhushan in 2023, and the Boltzmann Medal in 2022, together with John Hopfield, who shared the physics Nobel Prize 2024 for laying the foundations of neural networks. In fact, the Boltzmann Medal, awarded once every three years, is often considered the single most prestigious prize in statistical physics.

What is the Dirac Medal?

The ICTP Dirac Medal was established in 1985 to honor Paul Dirac, the British physicist whose equations helped lay the foundations of quantum mechanics. It is announced each year on Dirac’s birthday and awarded to physicists who have made outstanding contributions to theoretical physics but who have not already received the very top honours.

In fact, the medal is explicitly not given to Nobel laureates, Fields Medallists, or Wolf Prize laureates. Past recipients include Edward Witten, Stephen Hawking, and Leonard Susskind. Notably, several past Dirac Medallists have gone on to win a Nobel Prize.

All four of this year’s winners have been feted for pioneering work that applied the tools of statistical mechanics in distinct fields like non-equilibrium systems, optimisation problems, theoretical neuroscience, and artificial intelligence. He is only the second scientist based in India, after string theorist Ashoke Sen, to receive the Dirac Medal.

The ICTP itself was founded in 1964 by the Pakistani physicist and Nobel laureate Abdus Salam, together with the Italian government and the International Atomic Energy Agency. Salam had envisioned it as a place where physicists from the Global South could work together and exchange ideas with colleagues from around the world.

source/content: thehindu.com (headline edited)

India won one gold, three bronze medals and an honourable mention at the International Linguistics Olympiad (IOL) 2026 in Romania.

Shrilakshmi Venkatraman won the gold medal, and Aarav Anil Rao, Nishanth Shankar Lakshmanan and Advay Misra bagged bronze medals. Soham Amit Pednekar received an honourable mention.

The IOL brings together school students from more than 40 countries and tests their ability to decode patterns in unfamiliar languages through logic, analytical reasoning and pattern recognition.

India has participated in the IOL since 2009 and has now won 37 medals at a tally of six gold, nine silver and 22 bronze, besides other honours.

IIIT Hyderabad has played a key role in India’s participation since taking over mentoring of the Panini Linguistics Olympiad in 2015. Its Language Technologies Research Centre supports student training, mentoring and selection through camps, problem-solving sessions and mock Olympiads.

source/content: thehindu.com (headline edited)

Robotic-assisted surgeries helps reduce postoperative pain and blood loss, shorten hospital stays and facilitate faster recovery among patient.

The Nizam’s Institute of Medical Sciences (NIMS), Hyderabad, has completed 1,000 robotic-assisted surgeries in less than three years, with more than 90% of the procedures performed free of cost under government-supported healthcare schemes including Aarogyasri and the Chief Minister’s Relief Fund (CMRF).

Advantages of robotic-assisted surgery

Robotic-assisted surgery allows surgeons to perform complex procedures through smaller incisions with greater precision. The technology has helped reduce postoperative pain and blood loss, shorten hospital stays and facilitate faster recovery among patients. 

Of the 1,000 procedures, the Department of Urology accounted for the largest share with 590 surgeries, followed by Surgical Gastroenterology with 248 and Surgical Oncology with 162 procedures, the institute said.

The 590 urology procedures included complex cancer surgeries such as radical prostatectomy for prostate cancer and radical cystectomy for bladder cancer, besides robotic renal transplantation, uro-gynaecological and reconstructive procedures.

Surgical Gastroenterology surgeries

The 248 robotic procedures performed by Department of Surgical Gastroenterology included hepatobiliary, pancreatic, colorectal, intestinal and upper gastrointestinal surgeries.

Surgical Oncology surgeries

Another 162 procedures were carried out by the Department of Surgical Oncology for ovarian, uterine, colorectal and other cancers. These included procedures involving organ-preservation and nerve-sparing techniques, the institute said.

NIMS Director Rahul Devraj, who is also Senior Professor of Urology and Renal Transplantation and Robotic Surgery Coordinator, congratulated all the three departments along with nurses, operation theatre personnel and other supporting departments, for reaching the milestone.

Dr. Devraj also thanked Telangana Health Minister C. Damodar Raja Narasimha for his support in strengthening advanced healthcare services at the institute and Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy for the government’s efforts towards upgrading healthcare infrastructure.

source/content: thehindu.com (headline edited)

The newly developed catalyst integrates multiple functions enabling chemical reactions to proceed more effectively while improving access to active sites within the material.

Researchers at the Central University of Kerala (CUK) have secured an Indian patent for a novel multifunctional catalyst preparation technology that could help convert biomass and petrochemical feedstocks into cleaner fuels and other value added chemicals more efficiently.

The patent was granted for ‘Method for the Preparation of ITQ-2 Metal Oxy-Hydroxide Composite Material Thereof’ (Indian Patent No. 596368). The innovation was developed by Prof. A. Sakthivel along with researchers Soumya B.N. and Nimisha N.P.

Prof. Sakthivel said the team had developed a multifunctional catalyst, a specially engineered synthetic material known as zeolite, that can speed up chemical reactions required to convert biomass and petroleum-based raw materials into useful products.

“The main innovation is the preparation of the material itself. It is a multifunctional catalyst that combines acidic and redox (reduction-oxidation) properties in a single material, making it more efficient than conventional catalysts,” he said.

According to the researchers, conventional catalysts generally perform only one function, limiting their efficiency. The newly developed catalyst integrates multiple functions enabling chemical reactions to proceed more effectively while improving access to active sites within the material.

The technology is expected to find future applications in the petroleum and petrochemical industries, particularly in the production of cleaner fuels, fuel additives, polymers and other value-added chemicals. Prof. Sakthivel said the research had so far focused on developing and patenting the catalyst material, and commercial fuel production using the technology was yet to begin.

source/content: thehindu.com (headline edited)

.

ZSI scientists Navneet Singh and Rahul Joshi took almost 12 years to complete the monumental work of cataloguing, field exploration, museum curation, and rigorous literature verification.

India is home to 13,703 species of lepidoptera — butterflies and moths — which is about 8.25% of the total lepidoptera found across the globe.

Scientists of the Zoological Survey of India (ZSI) have come out with a detailed Catalogue of Lepidoptera (Butterflies & Moths) of India which has been published in peer reviewed journal Zootaxa.

ZSI scientists Navneet Singh and Rahul Joshi took almost 12 years to complete the monumental work of cataloguing, field exploration, museum curation, and rigorous literature verification.

“There have been attempts to classify and catalogue lepidoptera for over 100 years. There are 13,703 species of butterflies and moths across 3,705 genera, 240 subfamilies, 102 families, and 31 superfamilies,” Mr. Singh said.

Of the 13,703 species of lepidoptera 1,417 species are butterflies, and the remaining 12,286 are moths, Mr. Singh said.

The scientific work bridges critical taxonomic gaps that have persisted for more than 100 years, since the first historical attempts to document the region’s insect fauna, a Press Information Bureau release stated.

“It firmly positions India among a select group of megadiverse nations possessing a fully updated, centralized, and authoritative baseline inventory of its butterfly and moth diversity,” the release said.

Butterflies and moths play crucial roles in maintaining ecological equilibrium, serving as essential herbivores, detritivores, and pollinators, while acting as vital food resources for birds, bats, and other insectivores, the ZSI scientists said.

“These catalogue volumes will serve as a vital national asset for biodiversity research, ecological monitoring, and global conservation strategies. Such comprehensive catalogues ensure these species are given an authoritative voice, a clear legal identity, and a permanent place in scientific history,” Dhriti Banerjee, Director, ZSI, said.

Among the 13,703 species of lepidoptera, the scientists have identified and catalogued 2,205 species of Geometroidea, nocturnal pollinators taking over the ‘night shift’ when daytime butterflies rest. These 2,205 species of Geometroidea have been found across 479 genera, 13 subfamilies, and four families — accounting for 8.80% of the world’s known species in this superfamily.

source/content: thehindu.com (headline edited)

People hope that such efforts would help promote the region’s age-old handloom traditions and preserve them for future generations.

Ahead of National Handloom Day slated for August 7, Sircilla district-based handloom weaver Veldi Hariprasad showcased his skill and precision by weaving a saree — that could fit into a matchbox — in just 170 minutes, in Telangana’s textile town on Monday (August 3, 2026).

The unique feat was performed on a traditional handloom in the presence of local residents and several members of the weaving community. It drew appreciation for Mr. Hariprasad’s skill and perseverance while highlighting Sircilla’s rich handloom heritage.

Mr. Hariprasad said he had woven the 5.5-metre-long and 45-inch-wide saree weighing 175 grams using traditional weaving techniques.

Those who witnessed the feat described it as incredible and expressed hope that such efforts would help promote the region’s age-old handloom traditions and preserve them for future generations.

Mr. Hariprasad has earlier earned wide appreciation for weaving special sarees based on themes such as ‘Nari Shakti’ and ‘Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav’.

source/content: thehindu.com (headline edited)

Mallika Spine Centre, Guntur, Chief Spine Surgeon Dr. J. Naresh Babu has won the Best Paper Award at the Combined Meeting of SMISS-A.P., ASEAN-MIST, and the Singapore Spine Society held in Singapore from July 16 to 19, 2026. He shared details of this achievement at a press conference in Guntur on Monday (August 3).

His award-winning research, titled “Ligamentous Instability in Structurally Stable Cervical Myelopathy – A New Paradigm Shift in Understanding Disease Worsening,” presents a new explanation for the progression of cervical spondylotic myelopathy.

The study found that routine activities such as sitting and normal neck movements can change the ligamentum flavum and cause spinal cord compression, even in patients whose cervical spine appears stable on conventional scans. Using weight-bearing Sitting MRI, the research identified “ligamentous instability” as a possible reason for disease progression.

Dr. Naresh Babu said the findings could help doctors diagnose patients earlier, assess risks more accurately and prevent permanent spinal cord damage through timely treatment. The study also highlights the value of Sitting MRI in examining cervical spine disorders under normal physiological conditions.

Dr. Naresh Babu said receiving the award was a special moment, recalling that he had received the Young Orthopaedic Investigator Award from the Singapore Orthopaedic Association in 2007. He added that the latest recognition reflects Mallika Spine Centre’s continued contribution to spine surgery, innovation, and clinical research at the international level.

source/content: thehindu.com (headline edited)

N. R. Krishnaswamy, a senior orthodontist from Chennai, has become the first orthodontist from India to qualify as a Diplomate of the European Board of Orthodontics (EBO), an advanced clinical certification awarded by the European Orthodontic Society.

The examination is considered as one of the most rigorous assessments in orthodontics. He completed the examination during the European Orthodontic Society Congress held in Dublin, Ireland.

A clinician with nearly four decades of experience, Dr. Krishnaswamy recently retired as Professor and Head of the Department of Orthodontics at Ragas Dental College and Hospital. He has also served as Chairman of the Indian Board of Orthodontics, a press release said.

source/content: thehindu.com (headline edited)

The 17-year-old from Punjab, who had finished runner-up at last year’s U.S. Open Super 300, needed just 36 minutes to outclass Nguyen in the summit clash.

Teen Indian sensation Tanvi Sharma won her maiden BWF World Tour title after defeating Vietnam’s sixth seed Thuy Linh Nguyen 21-16 21-16 in the women’s singles final of the Taipei Open Super 300 badminton tournament in Taipei on Sunday (August 2, 2026).

The 17-year-old from Punjab, who had finished runner-up at last year’s U.S. Open Super 300, needed just 36 minutes to outclass Nguyen in the summit clash.

Coached by P.V. Sindhu‘s former mentor Park Tae-sang, Tanvi also became the first Indian to win the women’s singles title at the Taipei Open since Saina Nehwal, who had lifted the trophy in 2008.

Tanvi made a flying start, repeatedly catching Nguyen at the front court with deft drops played with the same action as a smash to open up a 4-1 lead. The Vietnamese struggled to read the Indian’s deception and also found it difficult to judge the drift, going wide twice as Tanvi mixed steep cross-court smashes with her trademark touch to surge to a 10-2 advantage.

The Indian, however, suddenly slipped into a string of errors, struggling to keep the shuttle inside the lines. She eventually produced a timely smash to carry a three-point lead into the mid-game interval, with coach Park Tae-sang urging her to relax.

Tanvi found her rhythm after the break, producing powerful smashes from both flanks to move 15-9 ahead. Though she gifted away a few points with errors at the net and from the back court, she regained control, earning five game points before sealing the opening game with a cross-court smash.

After the change of ends, Nguyen opened a 3-0 lead by making Tanvi cover the court with sharp angles. But the Indian slowly began dictating the rallies, drawing level at 3-3 with a fine net shot before once again pushing her opponent deep and catching her at the net with deft touches.

Nguyen’s inconsistency also helped Tanvi build an 8-4 lead before another patch of errors allowed the Vietnamese to close the gap to 7-8, prompting Park to tap his head in frustration. Two exquisite deceptive winners helped Tanvi take an 11-8 lead at the interval.

The Indian gradually stretched the advantage to 15-10 and then 18-12, her deception once again fetching crucial points. At 19-12, Tanvi unsuccessfully challenged a line call after being ruled late, but soon earned seven match points with a smash. A nervous finish saw her squander three of them before she finally converted to seal her maiden BWF title.

In a heartwarming moment, Tanvi took off her gold medal and placed it around coach Park Tae-sang’s neck before the two posed together for photographs.

At 17 years and 222 days, Tanvi is the youngest finalist in the tournament’s history, surpassing Korean doubles great Lee Yong Dae, who was 17 years and 287 days old when he reached the men’s doubles final in 2006.

Tanvi had become the first Indian to win two medals at a single edition of the World Junior Championships, securing silver in girls’ singles and bronze in the mixed team event. She was also a member of the Indian team that won the country’s maiden gold medal at the Asian Team Championships.

A former world junior No. 1, Tanvi reached her maiden Super 300 final at the 2025 US Open at the age of 16. She also finished runner-up at the Odisha Masters Super 100 and Guwahati Masters Super 100.

source/content: thehindu.com (headline edited)

Readers will find rare photographs documenting the hard-fought freedom struggle.

When India awoke to freedom on the morning of August 15, 1947, The Hindu was there to chronicle the birth of a newly independent nation. Now, as the country prepares to celebrate its 80th Independence Day, the publication is offering readers a rare opportunity to step back into that exact moment in time.

To honour this defining milestone, The Hindu has reproduced its landmark August 15, 1947, edition in its entirety. The original 32-page edition has been meticulously reproduced exactly as it appeared nearly eight decades ago.

Within its pages, readers will find rare photographs documenting the hard-fought freedom struggle and the country’s first proud steps forward. It features deeply personal Independence Day greetings from monumental figures including Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel.

Alongside these historic messages are vivid, on-the-ground reports of the very first flag-hoisting ceremonies that swept the nation. Even the vintage advertisements offer a fascinating, nostalgic glimpse into India’s social and commercial landscape of the era.

Starting August 1, 2026, limited copies of this collector’s edition will be available on Zepto across major Indian cities. It is a unique chance to own and hold history in your hands.

https://www.zepto.com/pip/zepto-grocery-delivered-in-mins/100002494

source/content: thehindu.com (headline edited)