In News:

Renowned Indian theoretical physicist Prof. Deepak Dhar has been awarded the prestigious 2026 Dirac Medal by the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP). He shares the honour with Bernard Derrida, Marc Mézard and Haim Sompolinsky for pioneering contributions to statistical mechanics and complex physical systems.

About Dirac Medal

Established in 1985, the ICTP Dirac Medal is named after British physicist Paul A. M. Dirac and recognises outstanding contributions to theoretical physics. It is awarded by ICTP in Trieste, Italy, an institution founded in 1964 by Nobel laureate Abdus Salam.

A distinctive feature is its Nobel Exclusion Rule: the medal is not awarded to scientists who are current Nobel, Fields or Wolf Prize laureates. The award reflects ICTP’s broader objective of promoting excellence in theoretical physics, particularly across the Global South.

Dhar is the second Indian scientist to receive the Dirac Medal, after Ashoke Sen, who received it in 2012.

Prof. Deepak Dhar’s Contribution

Dhar is best known for his foundational work on the Abelian Sandpile Model, a mathematical framework for understanding self-organised criticality. The model demonstrates how simple local interactions can produce complex systems that naturally evolve towards critical states.

His work established the Abelian property, showing that despite different sequences of cascading events or “avalanches”, the system ultimately reaches a predictable final state. Such theoretical approaches have broader applications in understanding earthquakes, forest fires, neural networks, traffic congestion and financial-market fluctuations.

Dhar has also received the Padma Bhushan (2023) and Boltzmann Medal (2022), the latter being a major international distinction in statistical physics.