Ganapathy Baskaran

Ganapathy Baskaran is an Indian theoretical physicist, known for his work on condensed matter physics and strongly correlated materials. Baskaran is an Emeritus Professor of physics at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences in Chennai, India and a Distinguished Research Chair at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Canada.

Baskaran completed his undergraduate education at the Thiagarajar college and the American College in Madurai, India. He got his PhD in theoretical physics from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore in 1975.

In 1987–88, Baskaran, along with P.W. Anderson at Princeton University, developed the resonating valence bond theory to describe the behavior of high-temperature superconductors. Baskaran is also known for his discovery of emerging gauge fields in strongly correlated systems, and for his predictions of p-wave superconductivity in strontium ruthenate and of high-temperature superconductivity in graphene; predictions which were later experimentally verified. In 1983, Baskaran was the first recipient of the ICTP Prize awarded by the International Center for Theoretical Physics, Trieste to young scientists in developing countries for work in physics and mathematics. He was a visiting scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study in the summer of 1996. He was also awarded the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize by the Government of India in 1990.