Padma Kant Shukla

Professor Padma Kant Shukla passed away suddenly on 26 January 2013 during his travel to New Delhi, India, the day after receiving the prestigious Hind Rattan (Jewel of India) Award. He was born 7 July 1950 in the village Tulapur, Uttar Pradesh (UP), India and was educated there. He graduated with Ph.D. in Physics from Banaras Hindu University in Varanasi, India at age 22. In 1975, he obtained his second doctorate degree in Theoretical Plasma Physics from Umea University under the supervision of one of us (L.S.). Affiliated with 14 academic and national institutions around the world throughout his career, his primary affiliation for 40 years was the Faculty of Physics & Astronomy, Ruhr-University Bochum (RUB), Germany, where in July 2010 he was appointed RUB International Chair, a lifetime Distinguished Physics Professor position. Padma Shukla published about 1500 papers in prestigious journals, playing very often a leading role in the exploration of new frontiers of plasma science, with special emphasis on the physics of dusty plasmas, on neutrino plasma physics, on nonlinear wave phenomena including parametric instabilities, on solitons and vortices, and on dense quantum plasma modes and structures. He was passionate about science and had an infectious enthusiasm that touched everyone who knew him.

Upon his death, Padma Shukla was not only one of the leading theorists in the entire plasma community, he was also one of the plasma community’s best examples of a world authority on numerous subtopics that span the entire range of the field, including basic and nonlinear physics, nonlinear geophysical flows, atmospheric physics and environmental sciences, soft condensed matter physics and matter wave solitons, high-energy density physics, nonlinear phenomena in quantum systems, plasma astrophysics and neutrino-plasma physics, plasma-based high-energy charged particle acceleration, intense photon-photon and photon-plasma interactions, and fusion physics. He published extensively on various aspects of theoretical and computational plasma physics and discovered numerous new phenomena involving wave-wave and wave-particle interactions in physical sciences. He coauthored the textbook Introduction to Dusty Plasma Physics and edited/co-edited 11 books and 17 Special Issues in various journals.

Padma Shukla’s publication record testified to his unmatchable scholarship in plasma physics and his international scientific reputation was elite. His impact on plasma physics was profound in terms of the number of significant publications, in terms of the number of research programs that have changed directions to more significant science because of his work, and in terms of the number of new subfields opened up by his seminal contributions. The number of international workshops organized, the number of international workshops attended, and the international dimension of his publications’ journal affiliations, his publications’ coauthors, and his scientific collaborations provided him global exposure. Padma Shukla was an inspiration to those around him and was responsible for discovering and mentoring young scientific talents around the world – national borders were no barriers when it came to scientific collaborations. For this he was honored with the 2005 APS Nicholson Medal for Human Outreach by the American Physical Society, a physics-wide international award of the highest caliber. Padma also received the prestigious 2006 Gay-Lussac/Humboldt Prize from the French Ministry of Education and Research. He is the First Laureate of the 22nd Khwarizmi International Award from the IROST, Iran.

Prof. Shukla’s influence on the research being carried out by others is documented by the cadre of junior and senior researchers who converted at least part of an established research program to investigate topics begun as a collaboration with Padma. Shukla. The most notable example of such conversions is in the field of dusty plasmas, where approximately one third of the present theoretical output in this field, performed by dozens of experienced researchers was stimulated by papers written by Padma Shukla and coworkers. One need only to look at the University of Iowa’s pioneering wave investigations in dusty plasmas, including the experimental verification of his prediction of the existence of the very low-frequency dust-acoustic wave (Planet. Space Sci. 38, 543, 1990) involving the dynamics of dust and its charge state, to see that Padma Shukla’s early work on dust-plasma instabilities influenced remarkably the experimental side as well. As co-organizer since 1989 of the plasma physics activities (Summer Colleges and Workshops in Plasma Physics) at the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), Trieste, Italy, Padma Shukla provided added value to the international multi-disciplinary plasma physics research for which he is renowned. Spending many weeks per year at the center, he interacted with young scientists from all over the world, encouraging them to work on new ideas.

Padma Shukla’s creativity, as measured by the new plasma subfields his work helped to establish, was prodigious. Besides being primarily responsible for the growth of dusty plasma research around the world, Padma Shukla deserves the credit for stimulating the new field of neutrino plasma physics, which is based on the enhancement of the weak nuclear force between an electron-neutrino beam and a dense plasma due to collective plasma processes. Ground-breaking contributions to existing subareas of nonlinear plasma physics can be found in the study of geophysical flows, astrophysical plasma-wave phenomena, parametric instabilities, and finite-envelope solitons, the subfields of which were influenced by the impact of Padma Shukla’s work.

His list of honorary appointments is impressive and include visiting professorships at the Department of Physics, Umea University, Sweden and at the Scottish Universities Physics Alliance (SUPA) Department of Physics, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland (UK), as well as a full professorship at GoLP/Centre for Plasma Physics and Nuclear Fusion, IST, Technical University of Lisbon, Portugal, an honorary professorship at the School of Physics, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa, a distinguished adjunct professorship at COMSATS Institute of Information Technology, Islamabad, Pakistan, and an adjunct professorship at National Physics Centre, Islamabad, Pakistan. He has honorary doctorates from the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow and the Technical University of Lisbon, Portugal. In addition, he is Fellow of the American Physical Society, Fellow of the Institute of Physics (UK), and Corresponding Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (Scotland, UK), a Foreign Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences, and an Associate Member of the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World (Trieste, Italy).

The world lost not only a great scientist, but also a dear colleague, collaborator, and friend. Padma Shukla is survived by his wife Ranjana and sons Prashant, Predhiman and Pushpesh.

Bob Bingham, Bengt Eliasson, Lennart Stenflo, Tito Mendonca, Asoka Mendis, and Mark Koepke