29 Notable alumni of Tata Institute of Fundamental Research
Updated: June 06, 2026 EliteDegrees
Tata Institute of Fundamental Research is ranked #868 in the world and #11 in India by aggregated alumni prominence. Below is the list of 29 notable alumni from Tata Institute of Fundamental Research sorted by their wiki pages popularity. The directory includes famous graduates and former students along with research and academic staff. Many individuals affiliated with Tata Institute of Fundamental Research won Nobel Prizes for Peace, in Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, and Economics.
1. Shrawan Kumar
1953-. (aged 73)
mathematician
university teacher
Shrawan Kumar is the John R. and Louise S. Parker distinguished professor of mathematics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has written two books: Kac-Moody groups, their flag varieties, and representation theory and Frobenius splitting methods in geometry and representation theory.
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2. T. N. Venkataramana
1958-. (aged 68)
mathematician
Tyakal Nanjundiah Venkataramana is an Indian mathematician who specialises in algebraic groups and automorphic forms.
3. S. G. Dani
1947-. (aged 79)
mathematician
university teacher
Shrikrishna Gopalrao Dani is a professor of mathematics at the Centre for Excellence in Basic Sciences, Mumbai who works in the broad area of ergodic theory.
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4. Ajit Kembhavi
1950-. (aged 76)
astrophysicist
astronomer
physicist
university teacher
Ajit Kembhavi is an Indian astrophysicist. He is presently a professor emeritus at the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics, (IUCAA) at Pune, India, of which he was also a founder member. He also serves as a vice president of the International Astronomical Union. He is the Principal Investigator of Pune Knowledge Cluster along with Professor L. S. Shashidhara.
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5. Raghavan Narasimhan
1937-2015 (aged 78)
mathematician
university teacher
Raghavan Narasimhan was an Indian mathematician at the University of Chicago who worked on real and complex manifolds and who solved the Levi problem for complex manifolds.
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6. Maneesha S. Inamdar
1967-. (aged 59)
academic
Maneesha Inamdar is a stem cell and developmental biologist conducting research at Bangalore, India. She is Director of inStem, and Professor at Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR), Bangalore. She is an elected fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences and the Indian National Science Academy and a J C Bose National Fellow with several awards and honors.
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7. Vijay Kumar Kapahi
1944-1999 (aged 55)
astrophysicist
Vijay Kumar Kapahi was an Indian astrophysicist and the director of the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics, an autonomous division of Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. Known for his research on radio galaxies, quasars and observational cosmology, Kapahi was an elected fellow of all the three major Indian science academies – Indian Academy of Sciences, Indian National Science Academy and...
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8. Jitendra Nath Goswami
1950-. (aged 76)
physicist
Jitendranath Goswami is an Indian scientist from Jorhat, Assam. He was the chief scientist of Chandrayaan-1, and was also the developer of this project. He served as a director of Physical Research Laboratory situated at Ahmadabad, Gujarat. He was also associated with Chandrayaan-2 and Mangalyaan.
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9. Madabusi Santanam Raghunathan
1941-. (aged 85)
mathematician
Madabusi Santanam Raghunathan FRS is an Indian mathematician. He is currently a Distinguished Professor of Mathematics at the Centre for Excellence in Basic Sciences in Mumbai, India. Previously, he was the Head of the National Centre for Mathematics, Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai. Formerly Professor of eminence at TIFR in Homi Bhabha Chair. Raghunathan received his PhD in Mathematics from...
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10. Gopal Prasad
1945-. (aged 81)
mathematician
Gopal Prasad is an Indian-American mathematician. His research interests span the fields of Lie groups, their discrete subgroups, algebraic groups, arithmetic groups, geometry of locally symmetric spaces, and representation theory of reductive p-adic groups.
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11. Dipan Ghosh
physicist
Dipan Ghosh is an Indian theoretical physicist, best known for his exact enumeration of the ground state of a Heisenberg antiferromagnet, known in literature as the Majumdar–Ghosh model, which he developed with Chanchal Kumar Majumdar.
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12. Ramachandran Balasubramanian
1951-. (aged 75)
mathematician
Ramachandran Balasubramanian is an Indian mathematician and was Director of the Institute of Mathematical Sciences in Chennai, India. He is known for his work in number theory, which includes settling the final g(4) case of Waring's problem in 1986. He is also known for his work in Cryptography which includes his famous work with Koblitz, now commonly called the Balu-Koblitz...
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13. Thanu Padmanabhan
1957-2021 (aged 64)
university teacher
astronomer
physicist
Thanu Padmanabhan was an Indian theoretical physicist and cosmologist whose research spanned a wide variety of topics in gravitation, structure formation in the universe and quantum gravity. He published nearly 300 papers and reviews in international journals and ten books in these areas. He made several contributions related to the analysis and modelling of dark energy in the universe and...
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14. Mangala Narlikar
1943-2023 (aged 80)
mathematician
university teacher
Mangala Narlikar was an Indian mathematician who did research in pure mathematics as well as writing for a lay audience. After her degrees in mathematics, she initially worked at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) in Mumbai and later worked as a lecturer in the University of Bombay and Pune.
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15. Yash Pal
1926-2017 (aged 91)
physicist
science communicator
Yash Pal was an Indian scientist, educator and educationist. He was known for his contributions to the study of cosmic rays, as well as for being an institution-builder. In his later years, he became one of the leading science communicators of the country.
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16. Atul Gurtu
1946-. (aged 80)
physicist
Atul Gurtu is a high energy physicist in India. He joined the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai, in 1971 and retired in 2011 as a senior professor, after a career spanning four decades in particle physics research.
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17. Ramamurti Shankar
1947-. (aged 79)
physicist
university teacher
Ramamurti Shankar is an American physicist who is the Josiah Willard Gibbs professor of physics at Yale University.
18. M. S. Narasimhan
1932-2021 (aged 89)
mathematician
Mudumbai Seshachalu Narasimhan FRS was an Indian mathematician. His focus areas included number theory, algebraic geometry, representation theory, and partial differential equations. He was a pioneer in the study of moduli spaces of holomorphic vector bundles on projective varieties. His work is considered the foundation for Kobayashi–Hitchin correspondence that links differential geometry and algebraic geometry of vector bundles over complex...
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19. Raman Parimala
1948-. (aged 78)
mathematician
university teacher
Raman Parimala is an Indian mathematician known for her contributions to algebra. She is the Arts & Sciences Distinguished Professor of mathematics at Emory University. For many years, she was a professor at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai.
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20. Conjeevaram Srirangachari Seshadri
1932-2020 (aged 88)
mathematician
professor
Conjeevaram Srirangachari Seshadri FRS was an Indian mathematician. He was the founder and director-emeritus of the Chennai Mathematical Institute, and is known for his work in algebraic geometry. The Seshadri constant is named after him. He was also known for his collaboration with mathematician M. S. Narasimhan, for their proof of the Narasimhan–Seshadri theorem which proved the necessary conditions for...
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21. E. C. George Sudarshan
1931-2018 (aged 87)
physicist
university teacher
Ennackal Chandy George Sudarshan was an Indian American theoretical physicist and a professor at the University of Texas. Sudarshan has been credited with numerous contributions to the field of theoretical physics, including Glauber–Sudarshan P representation, V-A theory, tachyons, quantum Zeno effect, open quantum system and quantum master equations, spin–statistics theorem, non-invariance groups, positive maps of density matrices, and quantum computation.
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22. Sujatha Ramdorai
1962-. (aged 64)
mathematician
Sujatha Ramdorai is an algebraic number theorist known for her work on Iwasawa theory. She is a professor of mathematics and Canada Research Chair at University of British Columbia, Canada. She was previously a professor at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research.
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23. Suresh Venapally
1966-. (aged 60)
mathematician
Suresh Venepally is an Indian mathematician known for his research work in algebra. He is a professor at Emory University.
24. K. VijayRaghavan
1954-. (aged 72)
geneticist
biologist
Krishnaswamy Vijayraghavan is an emeritus professor and former director of the National Centre for Biological Sciences. On 26 March 2018, the Government of India appointed him as the Principal Scientific Adviser to succeed Dr. R Chidamabaram. His term as Principal Scientific Adviser ended on 2 April 2022. In 2012, he was elected a fellow of The Royal Society and in...
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25. Jayant Vishnu Narlikar
1938-2025 (aged 87)
astrophysicist
science fiction writer
university teacher
astronomer
Jayant Vishnu Narlikar FNA, FASc, FTWAS was an Indian astrophysicist who performed research on alternative cosmology. He was also an author who wrote textbooks on cosmology, popular science books, and science fiction novels and short stories.
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26. Obaid Siddiqi
1932-2013 (aged 81)
geneticist
biologist
Obaid Siddiqi FRS was an Indian National Research Professor and the Founder-Director of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) National Center for Biological Sciences. He made seminal contributions to the field of behavioural neurogenetics using the genetics and neurobiology of Drosophila.
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27. Ashok Khemka
1965-. (aged 61)
civil servant
Ashok Khemka is a retired Indian Administrative Service officer of 1991 batch from Haryana cadre who formerly served as Additional Chief Secretary in the Government of Haryana. During his career of more than three decades, he worked solely for the state of Haryana. without a single deputation to the Central Government. He has been transferred 66 times during his career,...
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28. Ashoke Sen
1956-. (aged 70)
physicist
university teacher
Ashoke Sen FRS is an Indian theoretical physicist and ICTS-Infosys Madhava Chair Professor at the International Centre for Theoretical Sciences (ICTS), Bangalore. A former Distinguished Professor at the Harish-Chandra Research Institute, Prayagraj, He is also an honorary fellow in National Institute of Science Education and Research (NISER) India. He is also a Morningstar Visiting Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of...
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29. Mambillikalathil Govind Kumar Menon
1928-2016 (aged 88)
physicist
Mambillikalathil Govind Kumar Menon FRS also known as M. G. K. Menon, was an Indian physicist and policy maker who served as the Chairperson of ISRO in 1972 and also served as the Director general of Defence Research and Development Organisation from 1974 to 1978. Additionally Menon has also served as the minister of state in Ministry of Earth Sciences...
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