It is a matter of considerable pride that physicist Ashoke Sen has bagged another top global recognition. The string theorist, Madhava Chair Professor at Bengaluru’s International Centre for Theoretical Sciences, recently became the first Indian to be awarded the prestigious Oskar Klein Medal—14 years after he became the first from the country to receive the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics. He has also won the Infosys Prize and the Padma Bhushan at home. But where are the school projects and celebrations on Sen and his work? Or, indeed, on the winners of our top science awards named after Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar, Jagadish Chandra Bose and Vikram Sarabhai? To attract young minds to science and assure them that they can achieve path-breaking work in India, we must first celebrate the achievers we have.
