Narendra Kumar (physicist)

Narendra Kumar (1 February 1940 – 28 August 2017) was an Indian theoretical physicist and a Homi Bhaba Distinguished Professor of the Department of Atomic Energy at Raman Research Institute.

[1][note 1] In 2006, he received the Padma Shri, the fourth highest civilian honour of the Government of India, in the science and engineering category.

Post-retirement, he continued his association with RRI as the Homi Bhabha Distinguished Scientist and DAE chair professor.

[6] He carried on his work on superconductivity[8] and disordered systems[9] at Indian Institute of Science and his collaboration with Pedro Pereyra and others yielded the Dorokhov-Mello-Pereyra-Kumar (DMPK) equation, a theory on multi-channel conductivity using the principle of maximum entropy,[10] which has since been subjected to studies by several scientists.

[11][12][13] Besides his work on diffusion in glasses, Kumar has done extensive studies on random dynamical systems, especially on the nature of electron transport.

[15] Kumar has published four books, Interaction-Magnetically-Ordered-Solids, coauthored with his mentor, Krityunjai Prasad Sinha,[16] Invitation to Contemporary Physics,[17] Deterministic Chaos: Complex Chance out of Simple Necessity[18] and Quantum Transport in Mesoscopic Systems: Complexity and Statistical Fluctuations which is a monograph in the field of mesoscopic physics.

[21] He received the TWAS Prize in 1992[22] and the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, chose him for its Distinguished Alumnus Award in 1996.