
Padma Kant Shukla

Padma Kant Shukla (CorrFRSE, FInstP, FAPS, AFTWAS) (7 July 1950 – 26 January 2013) was a Distinguished Professor and first International Chair of the Physics and Astronomy Department of Ruhr-University Bochum (RUB) in Germany. He was also the Director of the International Centre for Advanced Studies in Physical Sciences at RUB. He held a Ph.D. in Physics from Banaras Hindu University (BHU) in Varanasi, India and a second doctorate in Theoretical Plasma Physics from Umeå University (UmU) in Sweden.
Personal background.
Padma Kant Shukla was born in the village Tulapur (near Chunar dist.Mirzapur) near Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh (UP), India and was educated there. After his Ph.D. in Physics from Banaras Hindu University (BHU) in Varanasi, India at the age of 22, he moved to Umeå University (UmU), Sweden in January 1972, and obtained his second doctorate degree in Theoretical Plasma Physics from UmU in 1975. He has lived in Bochum and worked at Ruhr University Bochum, Germany since January 1973, becoming a German Citizen in 1993. During his marriage with wife Ranjana Shukla he had 3 sons. 
Educational background.
Shukla has received honorary doctorates from the Prasidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Moscow) and the Technical University of Lisbon, Portugal. 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 Physics Class of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences, and an Associate Fellow/Member of TWAS-the World Academy for the Advancement of Sciences in the Developing World (Trieste, Italy). He has been awarded the prestigious 2005 American Physical Society Dweight Nicholson Medal for the Human Outreach through Physics, a 2011 APS Outstanding Referee, and is recipient of the 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.
Professional background.
Shukla has been a faculty member in the Physics and Astronomy Department at Ruhr-University Bochum (RUB), Germany since January 1973, where he is a Distinguished Physics Professor and holds an International Chair and Directorship of the International Centre for Advanced Studies in Physical Sciences at RUB.
Shukla holds an adjunct professorship of engineering sciences at the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California, USA; an adjunct physics professorship at the Department of Physics & Astronomy, Delhi University, India; visiting professorships at the Department of Physics, Umeå University, Sweden; and at the Scottish Universities Physics Alliance (SUPA) Department of Physics, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland (UK). He holds an invited full professorship at GoLP/Centre for Plasma Physics and Nuclear Fusion, Instituto Superior Technico, Technical University 
of Lisbon, Portugal; an honorary professorship at the School of Chemistry and Physics, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa..
He is a world-renowned theoretical plasma physicist, with wide-ranging research interest in multidisciplinary sciences 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 is famous for his international leadership in physical sciences.
He has published extensively (70 review papers and 1450 papers in more than sixty journals, including "Nature", "Nature Physics", "Reviews of Modern Physics", "Physical Review Letters", "Physical Review", "Physics of Plasmas", "Physics Letters A", receiving over 21,200 citations, with the Hirsch Index=62) on various aspects of theoretical and computational plasma physics, as well as discovered numerous novel phenomena involving wave-wave and wave-particle interactions in physical sciences.
He has coauthored the textbook, "Introduction to Dusty Plasma Physics", and edited or co-edited 15 books and several (18) Special Issues of various journals. He is the discoverer of the dust acoustic wave in dusty plasmas and novel attractive force between ions at atomic dimensions in quantum plasmas. He has more than 30 years of experience in committee work both at national and international levels.
Since 1989, Shukla has been a co-organizer/director of the plasma physics activities (Summer Colleges and Workshops in Plasma Physics) at the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (AS-ICTP), Trieste (Italy), Chairman of the International Advisory Committee of the International Conference on Physics of Dusty Plasmas (ICPDP), and International Advisory Committee member of the International Congress on Plasma Physics (ICPP). He has presented over 130 keynote, plenary, tutorial, and topical lectures in international conferences, including European Physical Society, American Physical Society, ICPP, ICPDP, Summer Colleges and Workshops at the AS-ICTP.
Shukla has significantly contributed to education, as well as to the development of basic and applied physics worldwide; specifically, in developing countries across the globe. He has served (2008-2011) as Chairman of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) C.16 Commission on Plasma Physics, 
and serving (since 2008) as Chairman of the Scientific Council of the Emerging Nations Science Foundation (Trieste, Italy), as Editor-in-Chief of J. Plasma Physics (Cambridge University Press, UK), as Editorial Board Member of Physical Review E (American Physical Society), as Associate Editor of Physics of Plasmas 
(American Institute of Physics), and as International Advisory Panel of Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion (Institute of Physics, Bristol, UK). He is reviewer for scientific projects from the US National Science Foundation, US Department of Energy, US NASA, European Science Foundation (ESF), Israeli Science Foundation 
(ISF), British Science Council, and acts as referees for the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, which awards Fellowships and Prizes. He acts as referees for more than seventy International Physics and Engineering Journals.