Infosys Science Foundation announces winners of Infosys Prize 2009

Thanu Padmanabhan of the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Pune; Ashoke Sen of Harish Chandra Research Institute, Allahabad; K VijayRaghavan of the National Centre of Biological Sciences, Bangalore; Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and Upinder Singh of the University of Delhi, have been chosen for the award of Infosys Foundation Prize for 2009 in recognition of outstanding contributions to scientific research in India.

The winners were announced by the trustees of the Infosys Science Foundation at an event held at the Infosys campus in Bangalore. Kapil Sibal, union minister of human resource development, was the chief guest of the function.

Prime minister Manmohan Singh will present the awards to the winners at a function in New Delhi on 4 January 2010, Infosys said in a website release.

Thanu Padmanabhan of Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Pune, has been awarded the Infosys Prize for Physical Sciences "in recognition of his contribution to a deeper understanding of Einstein's theory of gravity in the context of thermo dynamics and large scale structure in cosmology," the release said.

Ashoke Sen of Harish Chandra Research Institute, Allahabad, has been awarded the Infosys Prize for Mathematical Sciences in recognition of his fundamental contributions to mthematical pysics, in particular to String Theory.

K. Vijay Raghavan of National Centre of Biological Sciences, Bangalore, has won the Infosys Award for Life Sciences in recognition of his many contributions as a developmental geneticist and neurobiologist.