Hyderabad: Scientists from the Indian Institute of Science, University of Hyderabad and Indian Institute of Technology-Guwahati won the prestigious BM Birla science prizes for 2012. The prizes are given to scientists below the age of 40 in the fields of physics, chemistry, biology and mathematics.
Nobel laureate Prof. Venkataraman Ramakrishnan gave away the prizes to Dr G.S. Vaitheeswaran and Dr Banibrata Mukhopadhyay of IISc for physics on Saturday. Dr Ganesh Nagaraju, also from IISc, and Dr Vikash Kumar Dubey won the award for biology.
Dr Vaitheeswaran was recognised for his work on high energy materials and their replacements towards green applications. Dr Mukhopadhyay was awarded for his work on black holes, neutron stars and white dwarfs. He has established a new mass limit for white dwarfs which is larger than that proposed by Chandrasekhar.
On the other hand, Dr Dubey was recognised for his discoveries of the redox bio-chemistry of the pathogen Leishmania Donovani. Dr Nagaraju was awarded the prize for his work omn Fanconi Anemia, a genetic disorder associated with cancer.
Later, Professor Ramakrishnan delivered a talk on antibiotics and the cell’s protein factory at the BM Birla Science Centre here.
