The Infosys Prize 2026 for Mathematical Sciences is awarded to Prof. Riddhipratim Basu for outstanding contributions to probability theory and statistical physics. His work resolved the slow-bond problem and established large deviations asymptotics. He has settled conjectures on fluctuations for percolation models, including those that are not exactly solvable. He also developed explicit combinatorial descriptions of Wilson loop expectations in two-dimensional lattice Yang–Mills theory in an asymptotic strong-coupling regime.
Scope and Impact of Work
Many systems in statistical physics contain large numbers of components whose individual behavior is random, yet whose collective behavior admits a precise statistical description. Prof. Riddhipratim Basu studies how these statistical laws arise, how systems deviate from typical behavior, and why different models exhibit common patterns.
With Vladas Sidoravicius and Allan Sly, Prof. Basu solved the slow-bond problem. Imagine particles moving along a line, with each advancing only when the next site is empty. They proved that obstructing movement across a single bond, however slightly, reduces the overall flow. This settled a question open for decades. With Sourav Sarkar and Allan Sly, he subsequently established Liggett’s conjectural description of particle densities on either side of the obstruction.
Much of Basu’s work is motivated by Kardar–Parisi–Zhang universality, which predicts common fluctuation laws across different growth models. His methods illuminate correlations between fluctuations at different times and the fractal geometry of random limiting objects.
These geometric methods allow one to go beyond exactly solvable models. In recent joint work, he studied the fastest routes through a planar medium whose local travel speed varies randomly. For a class of these models, he and his collaborators obtained tighter bounds on fluctuations in the minimum travel time, improving a bound that had stood for over twenty years.
With Shirshendu Ganguly, he obtained explicit combinatorial descriptions of Wilson loop expectations in two-dimensional lattice Yang–Mills theory in an asymptotic strong-coupling regime. His wider contributions include random embeddings, convergence to equilibrium in reversible Markov chains, and rare events in random graphs.
Bio
Riddhipratim Basu is an Associate Professor at the International Centre for Theoretical Sciences of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bengaluru. He earned his Bachelor of Statistics in 2009 and Master of Statistics in 2011 from the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata. He completed his Ph.D. in Statistics at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2015, under Allan Sly. After two years as a Szegő Assistant Professor at Stanford University, he joined ICTS in 2017.
Prof. Basu’s research spans probability theory and statistical physics, including random growth, interacting particle systems, and random geometry. His honors include a Ramanujan Fellowship (2017), the INSA Medal for Young Scientists (2020), and the NASI Young Scientist Platinum Jubilee Award (2021). He was a plenary speaker at the conference on Stochastic Processes and their Applications in 2023 and was elected a Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences in 2025.
Timeline
Jury Citation
Prof. Riddhipratim Basu is recognized for fundamental contributions to probability theory and statistical physics, especially first and last passage percolation theory. His geometric methods characterize fluctuations and rare events in random growth models, including those beyond the reach of exact formulas.
With Vladas Sidoravicius and Allan Sly, he solved the longstanding slow-bond problem, proving that even a small local obstruction reduces the overall flow of particles. With Shirshendu Ganguly and Allan Sly, he established the first upper-tail large deviations principle for a class of first-passage percolation models that are not exactly solvable. In other collaborations, he resolved conjectures on fluctuations and the geometry of optimal paths in last-passage percolation.
With Shirshendu Ganguly, he also obtained an explicit combinatorial description of Wilson loop expectations in two-dimensional lattice Yang–Mills theory in an asymptotic strong-coupling regime.
Riddhipratim Basu
My warm congratulations to Riddhipratim Basu on receiving the Infosys Prize in Mathematical Sciences. His inventive methods have settled longstanding questions about percolation and random growth in probability and statistical physics. Based in India for most of his research career, he has also strengthened the country’s mathematical community through his active mentoring of younger researchers.
