President Droupadi Murmu today conferred the Rashtriya Vigyan Puraskar 2025 at a function held at Rastrapati Bhavan in New Delhi. This is the nation’s highest recognition for exceptional contributions in the fields of science, technology, and innovation. In the second edition of Rashtriya Vigyan Puraskar, the awards were given under four categories, including Vigyan Ratna, Vigyan Shree, Vigyan Yuva-Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar and Vigyan Team.
In the second edition of the award, Padma Vibhushan Prof. Jayant Vishnu Narlikar has been honoured with the Vigyan Ratna award posthumously. Prof. Narlikar was a renowned Indian astrophysicist and cosmologist who developed the Hoyle-Narlikar theory to unify gravitation and matter creation, providing a framework for a steady-state universe in the 1960s.
Eight scientists, including Dr Yusuf Mohammad Seikh, Jayan N, Prof. Mahan Maharaj, were conferred withthe Vigyan Shree award. Fourteen young scientists, including Ankur Garg of ISRO, Prof Amit Kumar Agarwal of IIT Kanpur, Prof. Arkaprava Basu of IISc Bengaluru, were awarded under the Vigyan Yuva-Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar category. While the Vigyan Team award was given to Team Aroma Mission CSIR.
Rashtriya Vigyan Puraskar has been instituted to honour outstanding and inspiring contributions of scientists, technologists and innovators working individually or in teams across the broad landscape of science and technology and technology-led innovations.
