Dr Sidharth bags IFM award

Director of Birla Centre to get Einstein-Galilei award for his discovery that the universe is expanding which he predicted one year ago

Dr B G Sidharth, director, B M Birla Science Centre, Hyderabad has been awarded the 2013 Institute for Theoretical Physics and Advanced Mathematics EinsteinGalilei (IFM) award for this year for his discovery that the universe is expanding which he theoretically predicted one year before the observations.

Though the awards are for contributions to natural philosophy, the IFM Scientific Advisory Board went ahead to assign the 2013 award to Professor Burra Gautam Sidharth for his work. Professor Christian Corda, IFM chairman, said, “We requested the IFM scientific advisory board to assign the 2013 award to Prof.
Burra Gautam Sidharth,“ said Prof. Christian Corda, IFM Chairman. The award consists of an official IFM Diploma and a gold medal. The institution awards prestigious and meritorious scientists for their lifetime contributions to science. BG Sidharth has bagged the award for his paper titled, `Dark Energy: The energy primordial and transcendent'.
The paper was published in the year 1997, at the seventh Marcel Grossman Conference in Jerusalem. Back then it had received much adulation and acclaim from the science fraternity. It has now become the accepted model of study of the universe as we know it.

The paper suggested that the universe is accelerating slowly, driven by what is now called Dark Energy. But, until 1997 the ruling paradigm was the exact opposite of what his paper put forth.

In the paper Sidharth had confirmed with the help of mathematical calculations and physics, which was later confirmed by Perlmutter, Reiss and a few others. Subsequently, they were awarded with the Nobel Prize in 2010 for the observation. The mathematical model that he used was called the fluctuational cosmology.

The other awardees for 2013 are Prof. Douglas D Osheroff and Ad memoriam to the Former IFM Secretary Franco Pettini.