Ashoke Sen: A life of big questions and little fuss

More than a decade later, Prof Ashoke Sen is back in public consciousness. Until a week ago, few outside academic circles had heard of the Oskar Klein Medal. Now, Sen's achievement has brought him and the honour into the national spotlight.

For Sen, so much has changed, yet so little. Echoing this sentiment, Dr Neelima Gupte, Professor Emeritus at IIT Madras and a former batchmate of Sen at the State University of New York (SUNY), says, "Over the years, he has received international recognition and earned a place among the world's most distinguished scientists. But to those of us who knew him before the accolades, he remains much the same." She reminisces about exploring New York with him and climbing the Statue of Liberty for the first time. That was fall of 1978.

Ever since, he has devoted much of his career to seeking answers to seemingly innocent questions: What are we made of? How does the universe function? "At the heart of Sen's work is string theory, one of the approaches that bring gravity and quantum mechanics into a single framework. Einstein's theory of general relativity elegantly explains gravity and the universe on large scales, whereas quantum mechanics governs the subatomic world. Both theories work extraordinarily well in their respective domains. But in extreme conditions, such as in a black hole or in the early universe, gravity and quantum effects both are important. Here, these theories fail to give us a complete picture," explains Prof Dawood Kothawala, a theoretical physicist at IIT-Madras.

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Sen is pursuing some of the hardest questions in theoretical physics. Yet, he pursues these grand ideas with simplicity and childlike curiosity. For him, no question is too elementary. Jyotirmoy Barman, a PhD scholar at the International Centre for Theoretical Sciences (ICTS), Bengaluru, who is co-guided by Sen, says, "He has the ability to elevate even the most trivial question. He encourages discussion and gives every question its due in class. His 90-minute lectures on cosmology often run over time, but the discussions are so engaging that everyone loses track of time."

At a time when AI is solving decades-old, difficult mathematical problems in a matter of hours, Sen takes a pragmatic view of the technology. He does not see it in a simplistic binary of good or bad. What matters, Barman says, is if it can advance the pursuit of knowledge. "If AI helps us understand the fundamental laws governing the universe faster, why not? As long as it provides answers to the questions we are asking, it is fine. But it should not replace our ability to ask questions," Barman says, summarising Sen's view.

When it comes to research, Sen is a natural. "There are two kinds of researchers: those who crack a problem, and those who dissolve one. Sen belongs to the latter," says Dr Roji Pius, a former student of Sen who is now a theoretical physicist at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences (IMSc), Chennai. On the significance of this medal, Pius pointed out, "Ashoke has consistently produced some of the most impactful research being in India, at a time when the infrastructure for research was far from adequate. The Indian scientific community is fortunate to have him. Whenever he receives an award, we feel that each of us has been honoured."

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Nearly five decades later, Gupte and her friends still turn to Sen whenever they find themselves in a sticky situation. His ability to cut through the clutter and get to the heart of a matter, she says, is something they have benefited from repeatedly.

"He will say exactly the right thing," she recalls. Gupte remembers this quality coming through during the agitation over the implementation of reservations under the VP Singh government in the early '90s. Sen had spoken in favour of reservations, prompting some to ask why caste had suddenly become such an important issue when it had rarely figured in conversations as students, a decade or two earlier.

Sen's response, she recalls, was pointed: "What was there to talk about? Everybody was upper caste." The remark exposed an uncomfortable truth about social milieu at the time.

That's Ashoke Sen, a source of national pride for the moment, but soon to fade from our collective memory until his next award.