Sadhan Kumar Adhikari is a Brazilian-Indian professor of

physics Physics is the scientific study of matter, its Elementary particle, fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge whi ...

at the Institute of Theoretical Physics (IFT) of the

São Paulo State University São Paulo State University (Unesp, ) is a public university run by the São Paulo State Government, state government of São Paulo (state), São Paulo, Brazil. Unesp has a combined student body of over 45,000 spread among its 23 campuses. The ...

(UNESP) since 1991.

Early life

Sadhan Kumar Adhikari was born to Nalini Ranjan and Mira Adhikari on 2 January 1948 in Kharagpore, India. In 1962 he graduated from

Hindu School, Kolkata Hindu School is a state government-administered school in Kolkata (Calcutta), India. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest modern educational institution in Asia (then known as ''Hindu College''). The institution played a key role during Bengal R ...

and then joined the

Bachelor of Science A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, B.S., B.Sc., SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree that is awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Scienc ...

program at the

Presidency University, Kolkata Presidency University, formerly Presidency College, is a public state university located in College Street, Kolkata. Established in 1817 as the ''Hindoo College'', it was later renamed ''Presidency College'' in 1855 and functioned as a leadi ...

which he finished with honours by 1965. The same year he started the

Master of Science A Master of Science (; abbreviated MS, M.S., MSc, M.Sc., SM, S.M., ScM or Sc.M.) is a master's degree. In contrast to the Master of Arts degree, the Master of Science degree is typically granted for studies in sciences, engineering and medici ...

course at the

University of Calcutta The University of Calcutta, informally known as Calcutta University (), is a Public university, public State university (India), state university located in Kolkata, Calcutta (Kolkata), West Bengal, India. It has 151 affiliated undergraduate c ...

which he completed by 1968. For a year he was a post-M.Sc fellow at the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, India and in 1973 obtained PhD in

from the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. One of nine colonial colleges, it was chartered in 1755 through the efforts of f ...

, USA. From 1973 to 1976 worked at the

University of New South Wales The University of New South Wales (UNSW) is a public research university based in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. It was established in 1949. The university comprises seven faculties, through which it offers bachelor's, master's and docto ...

, Australia as a post-doc scholar and since 1976 till 1991 was an associate professor at the

Federal University of Pernambuco Federal University of Pernambuco (, UFPE) is a public university in Recife, Brazil, established in 1946. UFPE has 70 undergraduate courses and 175 postgraduate courses. , UFPE had 35,000 students and 2,000 professors. The university has three c ...

, Brazil.

Research

He contributed to the area of few-body scattering in nuclear and atomic physics, renormalization in nonrelativistic quantum mechanics, and the physics of cold atoms and superfluids. He formulated the quantum scattering theory in two dimensions using

Lippmann–Schwinger equation The Lippmann–Schwinger equation (named after Bernard Lippmann and Julian Schwinger) is one of the most used equations to describe particle collisions – or, more precisely, scattering – in quantum mechanics. It may be used in scatt ...

s and the asymptotic

wave function In quantum physics, a wave function (or wavefunction) is a mathematical description of the quantum state of an isolated quantum system. The most common symbols for a wave function are the Greek letters and (lower-case and capital psi (letter) ...

for scattering. From 2002 to 2009 he used Gross–Pitaevskii equation to study the formation of bright

soliton In mathematics and physics, a soliton is a nonlinear, self-reinforcing, localized wave packet that is , in that it preserves its shape while propagating freely, at constant velocity, and recovers it even after collisions with other such local ...

s in a Bose–Einstein condensate using FORTRAN 77 programs. He, in collaboration with P. Muruganandam and Antun Balaž, and colleagues from the Institute of Physics, Scientific Computing Laboratory, Belgrade wrote popular Fortran and C programs to solve the Gross–Pitaevskii equation and study properties of Bose–Einstein condensates using the

Crank–Nicolson method In numerical analysis, the Crank–Nicolson method is a finite difference method used for numerically solving the heat equation and similar partial differential equations. It is a Big O notation, second-order method in time. It is Explicit and im ...

. He is the author of two books on scattering theory published by Academic Press, San Francisco, Hard cover (1988), Paperback (2012) and eTextbook (2012) and by John Wiley & Sons, New York (1998). According to Webofscience he published more than 300 research articles with more than 7000 citations (H factor=44).

Awards

Dr. Adhikari is a Graduate fellow of the

(1970), and a Fellow of the

John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation is a private foundation formed in 1925 by Olga and Simon Guggenheim in memory of their son, who died on April 26, 1922. The organization awards Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are Gr ...

(1996).

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Adhikari, Sadhan Kumar 1948 births Living people Academic staff of the Federal University of Pernambuco Academic staff of the University of New South Wales United States National Science Foundation officials University of Pennsylvania fellows Academic staff of the São Paulo State University Brazilian people of Indian descent