ICTS professor Deepak Dhar awarded prestigious 2026 Dirac Medal

The International Centre for Theoretical Sciences (ICTS) announced on August 10, 2026 that its professor Deepak Dhar has been awarded the prestigious 2026 Dirac Medal. The award recognizes his groundbreaking contributions to statistical mechanics and complex systems. Prof. Dhar, an INSA distinguished professor at ICTS, shares the honor with three other leading figures in the field: Bernard Derrida, Marc Mezard, and Haim Sompolinsky.

The ICTS hailed the four scientists for their "pioneering contributions to equilibrium statistical mechanics and for extending its concepts and methods into non-equilibrium statistical mechanics, optimization problems, theoretical neuroscience, and artificial intelligence." ICTP Director Atish Dabholkar emphasized the broad impact of these scientists' work, noting that it "has contributed to establishing theoretical physics, and particularly statistical mechanics, as a powerful framework to tackle a very broad range of questions that go far beyond its traditional domain of interest."

Prof. Dhar's specific contributions include his work on the sandpile model, which demonstrated how simple interactions can lead to complex and sometimes unpredictable behavior in large systems. This theory has been applied to various fields, ranging from earthquakes and traffic jams to financial market fluctuations.