Prof. G. Baskaran is a highly acclaimed condensed matter physicist and is internationally known for his contributions to the theory of high temperature superconductivity, strongly correlated electron systems, quantum Hall effect, fullerenes and carbon nanotubes. P.W. Anderson and Baskaran first developed the RVB theory of High-Temperature Superconductivity in 1988. Recently he has been working on the transport of chargeless particles with spin known as "spinons" and has coined a term "Spinonics" to describe the manipulation of these particles. He is also interested in theoretical biology in problems such as gene organization in bacteria, exciton transport in photosynthetic system and electrons transport in DNA.
Prof. Baskaran received his Ph. D. from Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore in 1975. He has been closely associated with International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), Trieste and Princeton University. Since 1987 he has been with the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai, where he is now a senior professor.
In 1983, the ICTP Prize in honour of Alfred Kastler, Nobel Laureate 1966 and Chairperson of the ICTP Scientific Council (1970-1983), in the fields of Solid State Physics, Atomic and Molecular Physics, was awarded to Prof. Baskaran, for important contributions to the theory of antiferromagnetic insulators, phase transitions in condensed matter and lattice gauge theories.
Prof. Baskaran received the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar award in 1990. He is a fellow of Indian National Science Academy, New Delhi and Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore.