Renowned physicist Bikash Sinha passes away at 78

Eminent nuclear physicist Bikash Sinha, a former director of the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics (SINP) and the Variable Energy Cyclotron Centre (VECC), died here on Friday.

Saha, 78, who had been suffering from old age-related ailments, was a recipient of the Padma Bhushan in 2010 for his contribution to science & technology.

Condoling his demise, West Bengal Governor C V Ananda Bose said he was a personal friend, an eminent scientist and a good human being.

“... Dr Bikash Sinha was honoured by the Nation with Padma Bhushan. May the soul of the dear departed rest in peace,' Bose said in a statement.

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee described him as a talented nuclear physicist and an illustrious son of Bengal.

'Saddened to know about the untimely demise of the great scientist Bikash Sinha,' Banerjee tweeted.

The SINP and VECC, under his directorship, collaborated with the CERN (European Organisation for Nuclear Research) for experiments in particle physics.

Sinha had held the Homi Bhaba chair at the VECC and was a fellow of the Indian National Science Academy. He had also been nominated as a member of the Scientific Advisory Council to the PM in 2005.

Born in a zamindar family of Kandi in West Bengal's Murshidabad district, he studied physics at Presidency College in Kolkata, before pursuing higher studies in the subject at King's College, Cambridge.

Sinha, a fellow of several academies including 3rd World Academy of Sciences, Italy, and recipient of numerous awards, contributed immensely to the field of Quark Gluon Plasma, a state of matter in quantum chromodynamics, which exists at extremely high temperature and/or density.

He led the team from India to participate in the experiments at CERN, Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory in the USA and at the Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research (FAIR) in Germany.

A recipient of Padma Shri in 2001 and the SN Bose Birth Centenary Award of the Indian Science Congress Association in 1994, he was conferred by the West Bengal government the state's highest award Bangabibhushan in 2022 and also the Rabindra Smriti Puraskar in the same year.

Apart from scientific contributions, Sinha was a regular writer on popular science in Bengali.