Famous 21st Century Indian Scientists

Known for her humility and simplicity, Indian philanthropist and author Sudha Murty had humble beginnings as a TELCO engineer. She is married to Infosys co-founder Narayan Murty and heads the Infosys Foundation. The Padma Shri winner has penned over 200 titles, such as Dollar Bahu, in both Kannada and English.

Pakistani engineer Abdul Qadeer Khan was a major figure in the development of his country’s nuclear plans. His research also focused on uranium enrichment. He was later apparently involved in transfer of nuclear technology to Iran, among other countries, but was pardoned by then-president Pervez Musharraf.

Ramon Magsaysay Award-winning geneticist M. S. Swaminathan is best known for his contribution to the Indian Green Revolution. Featured on Time, he introduced high-yielding varieties of wheat and rice seedlings to Indian farmers. He is also known for his administrative work as part of the Indian civil services.

The current Indian defense minister Rajnath Singh has previously held other important portfolios, such as home affairs and agriculture. He has also been a BJP president and the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh. Born into a farmer’s family, he worked as a physics lecturer before he joined the RSS.

A Computer Scientist and Inventor, Pranav Mistry is best known for developing SixthSense, a gesture-based wearable computer system. Earlier, he had introduced a smartwatch called Samsung Galaxy Gear and a 3D-capturing 360-degree camera called Project Beyond; his other inventions being Mouseless, Quickies, Blinkbot etc.  

Born to a math professor father and a Sanskrit scholar mother, Astrophysicist and IUCAA professor Jayant Narlikar grew up to collaborate with Sir Fred Hoyle, leading to the conformal gravity theory, also known as the Hoyle-Narlikar theory. He has won the Padma Bhushan and Padma Vibhushan and penned sci-fi novels, too.

Indian environmental activist and physicist Vandana Shiva is known for her anti-GMO campaigns. The Gandhi of grain is the founder of RFSTN, which promotes sustainable agriculture, and is against globalization. She developed an interest in environmentalism after witnessing a forest at her hometown being cleared for a project.

The pioneer of fiber optics, Indian-American physicist Narinder Singh Kapany had over 100 patents in his name. He was the first to send images through fiber optics and also worked on areas such as laser technology and solar energy. He and his wife also established the California-based Sikh Foundation.

Padma Vibhushan winner and nine-time Nobel Prize nominee theoretical physicist E. C. George Sudarshan was born in India but moved to the U.S. to study at the University of Rochester. He later joined Harvard and made ground-breaking discoveries in topics such as quantum optics, tachyons, and the quantum Zeno effect.

Aerospace engineer and scientist Mylswamy Annadurai, also known as the Moon Man of India, had humble beginnings in his native village, Kodhawady, in southern India. He later grew up to be a key member of ISRO and contributed immensely to Indian space programs such as Chandrayaan-1 and Mangalyaan.

Tessy Thomas is an Indian scientist who became the first-ever woman to head an Indian missile project when she served as project director for Agni-IV. For her immense contribution to the field of missile technology, Tessy Thomas was honored with the prestigious Lal Bahadur Shastri National Award.

Vijay P. Bhatkar is an Indian educationalist and computer scientist. One of the pioneers of India's IT industry, Bhatkar is renowned for initiating the development of Param supercomputers. Over the course of his career, Bhatkar has been honored with many prestigious awards, such as the Padma Shri and Padma Bhushan.

Raj Reddy is an Indian-American computer scientist. One of the pioneers of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Reddy was honored with the prestigious Turing Award in 1994 for his contribution to the field of artificial intelligence. He is the first computer scientist of Asian descent to win the award, which is often referred to as the Nobel Prize of Computer Science.

Venkatraman Ramakrishnan is a British-American structural biologist whose research on the function of the ribosome earned him the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry which he shared with Ada Yonath and Thomas A. Steitz. From 2015 to 2020, he served as the president of the Royal Society.

Ashoke Sen is an Indian theoretical physicist whose immense contribution to string theory has earned him accolades and respect around the world. The recipient of several prestigious awards like the Padma Shri and Padma Bhushan, Sen also serves as a professor at several prestigious institutions like the Harish-Chandra Research Institute, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Korea Institute for Advanced Study.

Deeply connected with Indian innovation movement, Raghunath Anant Mashelkar is especially known for his contributions to transport phenomena. Throughout his career, he had held important positions, including the post of the Director General of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research. He also chaired many important national committees, investigating diverse issues like drug regulatory system and national auto fuel policy.

Considered as a child prodigy, Tathagat Avatar Tulsi is an Indian physicist, who finished high school at the age nine, earned his B.Sc. at eleven and M.Sc. at twelve. At twenty-one, he earned his PhD and in the following year joined IIT Mumbai as Assistant Professor on contract, where he worked until he lost his job due to bad health.  

Krishnaswamy Kasturirangan is an Indian space scientist who supervised the development of several scientific satellites including the Indian Remote Sensing Satellites IRS-1A and IRS-1B and the Indian National Satellite (INSAT-2) while serving as the director of ISRO Satellite Centre. He served as the chairman of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) for nine years from 1994 to 2003.

S. R. Srinivasa Varadhan is an Indian American mathematician whose contributions to probability theory have earned him several prestigious awards including the National Medal of Science in 2010. He is also renowned for coming up with a unified theory of large deviations. He is currently serving as a professor at the Courant Institute.

Anil Kakodkar is an Indian mechanical engineer and nuclear physicist who served as the director of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) from 1996 to 2000. He is one of the core members of the team which conducted Pokharan II nuclear tests. Over the course of his career, Kakodkar has received several prestigious awards, such as the Padma Bhushan and Padma Vibhushan.

Manindra Agrawal is an Indian computer scientist and mathematician whose creation of the AKS primality test earned him the Fulkerson Prize as well as the Gödel Prize. He also won the first Infosys Prize for Mathematics for his contributions in the field of mathematics. He is currently serving as the deputy director at the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur.

Mahan Mj is an Indian monk and mathematician who is currently teaching mathematics at the prestigious Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. Renowned for his work in geometric group theory, hyperbolic geometry, complex geometry, and low-dimensional topology, Mahan Mj has received several awards, such as the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award and the 2015 Infosys Prize.

S. Ramanan is a mathematician whose contributions to the field of algebraic geometry have established him as one of India's most prominent mathematicians. Ramanan is also known for his work in differential geometry and his published work on universal connections has helped B Simons and SS Chern introduce the Chern-Simons invariant, which has played a significant role in theoretical physics.

Sekhar Basu was an Indian nuclear scientist credited with playing a major role in building the nuclear reactor for INS Arihant, India's first nuclear-powered submarine. He is also credited with building the Indian Neutrino Observatory in Theni and nuclear waste recycling plants in Kalpakkam and Tarapur. In 2014, he was honored with the Padma Shri award.

Abhas Mitra is an Indian astrophysicist who has gained popularity for challenging several cosmological concepts related to black holes and the Big Bang by popular physicists and cosmologists including Stephen Hawking. His article on black holes, which was published in 2000, challenged Hawking's theory. Hawking would later accept his blunder almost 13 years later.