Shivaji Lal Sondhi is an Indian-born theoretical physicist who is currently the

Wykeham Professor of Physics The University of Oxford has three statutory professorships named after William of Wykeham, who founded New College. Logic The Wykeham Professorship in Logic was established in 1859, although it was not known as the Wykeham chair until later. I ...

in the Rudolf Peierls Centre for Theoretical Physics at the

University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the world's second-oldest university in contin ...

, known for contributions to the field of quantum

condensed matter Condensed matter physics is the field of physics that deals with the macroscopic and microscopic physical properties of matter, especially the solid and liquid phases which arise from electromagnetic forces between atoms. More generally, the sub ...

. He is son of former Lok Sabha MP

Manohar Lal Sondhi Manohar Lal Sondhi (1933–2003) was an Indian politician and a member of Lok Sabha. He represented New Delhi constituency in 4th Lok Sabha from 1967 to 1971, elected as a candidate of Bharatiya Jan Sangh. He had his education from Punjab Univer ...

Early life and career

Sondhi was brought up in

Delhi, India Delhi, officially the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi, is a city and a union territory of India containing New Delhi, the capital of India. Straddling the Yamuna river, primarily its western or right bank, Delhi shares borders ...

, where he was educated through high school at Sardar Patel Vidyalaya. He received a B.Sc. in physics from

Hindu College, University of Delhi Hindu College is a constituent college of the University of Delhi in New Delhi, India. It offers undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in sciences, humanities, social sciences and commerce. In 2022, it is ranked 2nd nationally by National ...

in 1984. He enrolled in the doctoral program in physics at the

State University of New York at Stony Brook Stony Brook University (SBU), officially the State University of New York at Stony Brook, is a public research university in Stony Brook, New York. Along with the University at Buffalo, it is one of the State University of New York system's ...

and began working under the supervision of Steven Kivelson. Around 1988–89, Sondhi moved with his advisor to the

University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a Normal school, teachers colle ...

, where he received his PhD in 1992. He spent three years as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (formally under the joint supervision of Gordon Baym, Eduardo Fradkin, Paul Goldbart, and Michael Stone at what is now the Institute for Condensed Matter Theory), before taking up an assistant professorship at Princeton in 1995. At Princeton, Sondhi was promoted to associate professor in 2001, and to professor of physics in 2005. He served as a Senior Fellow of the Princeton Center for Theoretical Science (which he co-founded) from 2006–08. Sondhi remained at Princeton until 2021, when he was appointed to the Wykeham Professorship at the University of Oxford, succeeding David Sherrington.

Research

Sondhi has worked extensively across a wide range of topics in theoretical condensed matter physics, notably in the areas of topological phases of matter,

strongly correlated electrons Strongly correlated materials are a wide class of compounds that include insulators and electronic materials, and show unusual (often technologically useful) electronic and magnetic properties, such as metal-insulator transitions, heavy fermio ...

, and quantum magnetism. His recent research activity focuses on the study of many-body quantum dynamics. Sondhi's most significant contributions include the discovery of skyrmions in the quantum Hall effect (with A. Karlhede, S. Kivelson and E. Rezayi), the identification of a resonating valence bond liquid phase in the triangular lattice quantum dimer model (with R. Moessner), the theoretical prediction of magnetic monopoles in spin ice (with C. Castelnovo and R. Moessner), and for proposing the

\pi

-spin glass/time crystal state of periodically driven (Floquet) systems (with V. Khemani, A. Lazarides and R. Moessner).

Awards and honors

In 1996, Sondhi was awarded the William L. McMillan Award in condensed matter physics from the University of Illinois. He is a recipient of both the

Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship The Sloan Research Fellowships are awarded annually by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation since 1955 to "provide support and recognition to early-career scientists and scholars". This program is one of the oldest of its kind in the United States. ...

(1996) and of a David and Lucile Packard Fellowship (1998), and was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2008. He also received a

Humboldt Research Award The Humboldt Prize, the Humboldt-Forschungspreis in German, also known as the Humboldt Research Award, is an award given by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation of Germany to internationally renowned scientists and scholars who work outside of G ...

from the

Alexander von Humboldt Foundation The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (german: Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung) is a foundation established by the government of the Federal Republic of Germany and funded by the Federal Foreign Office, the Federal Ministry of Education and Rese ...

in 2015. Sondhi was awarded a 2020 Leverhulme International Professorship to be held at the University of Oxford. In 2012, Sondhi shared the EPS Europhysics Prize with

Steven T. Bramwell Steven T. Bramwell (born 7 June 1961) is a British physicist and chemist who works at the London Centre for Nanotechnology and the Department of Physics and Astronomy, University College London. He is known for his experimental discovery of spi ...

Claudio Castelnovo Claudio is an Italian and Spanish first name. In Portuguese it is accented Cláudio. In Catalan and Occitan it is Claudi, while in Romanian it is Claudiu. Origin and history Claudius was the name of an eminent Roman gens, the most important me ...

Santiago Grigera Santiago (, ; ), also known as Santiago de Chile, is the capital and largest city of Chile as well as one of the largest cities in the Americas. It is the center of Chile's most densely populated region, the Santiago Metropolitan Region, wh ...

Roderich Moessner Roderich Moessner is a theoretical physicist at the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems in Dresden, Germany. His research interests are in condensed matter and materials physics, especially concerning new and topological form ...

, and Alan Tennant, for the prediction and experimental observation of magnetic monopoles in spin ice.

Other activities

Sondhi also directed a program on India and the World at the Center for International Security Studies at the

Woodrow Wilson School The Princeton School of Public and International Affairs (formerly the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs) is a professional public policy school at Princeton University. The school provides an array of comprehensive course ...

of Princeton University. Previously, he co-founded and co-directed a program on Oil, Energy and the Middle East at Princeton.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sondhi, Shivaji Scientists from Delhi Indian theoretical physicists Delhi University alumni Stony Brook University alumni Indian expatriate academics Indian expatriates in the United States Princeton University faculty University of California, Los Angeles alumni Living people Fellows of the American Physical Society Sloan Research Fellows Humboldt Research Award recipients Year of birth missing (living people)