ICTS is delighted to announce that Ashoke Sen has been awarded the prestigious Oskar Klein Medal for 2026, becoming the first Indian physicist to receive the honour.
The medal, named after the Swedish theoretical physicist Oskar Klein, is awarded annually by Stockholm University and the Nobel Committee for Physics of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Established in 1988, it recognises distinguished contributions to physics. Previous recipients include Nobel laureates Chen-Ning Yang, Steven Weinberg and Hans Bethe, who received the medal in its first three years, respectively.
Prof. Sen, an ICTS-Infosys Madhava Chair Professor, is internationally recognised for his pioneering work on S-duality, the precision counting black-hole entropy and string field theory, all of which have helped shape modern string theory.
The 2026 Oskar Klein Memorial Lecture, titled “Gravity from Strings and Strings from Gravity,” was delivered by Prof. Sen at Stockholm University’s AlbaNova Centre on 22 October 2026.
Prof. Sen has also received the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics in 2012 for his contributions to establishing the unifying structure of string theory, and the Dirac Medal in 2014. His other honours include the Infosys Prize in Mathematical Sciences (2009), the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize (1994), the ICTP Prize (1989), and the Padma Shri (2001) and Padma Bhushan (2013). He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1998.
Centre Director Rajesh Gopakumar said, “On behalf of all of us, very warm congratulations to Ashoke. It has been no less than wonderful having Ashoke with us and setting the tone for excellence here at ICTS.”