Balajapalli Sriram Shastry obtained his BSc (1968) from Nagpur University, MSc (1970) from IIT Madras and PhD (Theoretical Condensed Matter Physics) from Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) where his advisor was C K Majumdar. Thereafter, he was a Lecturer in Physics, University of Hyderabad, Postdoctoral Fellow, Imperial College, London (1979).  Later he visited the University of Utah (1980-82). He joined TIFR   as a Fellow and then as Reader from 1982-87. He  visited Princeton University (1987) and then became  Member of Technical Staff of the Theoretical Division of the Bell Laboratories at Murray Hill (1988-94). He worked in  Indian Institute of Science as a Professor in (1994-2003), and in 2003 he moved as a Professor to  the University of California Santa Cruz.  He is currently a Distinguished Professor of Physics at the University of California at Santa Cruz.

Academic and Research Achievements: Shastry's key research findings in quantum magnetism relate to the exact solution of the inverse squared exchange model, and a two-dimensional quantum spin model later realized experimentally in strontium copper borate, the first construction of spinons, the first proof of long-ranged order in 2-D quantum XY model ground state and thereby the proof of Bose condensation surviving repulsive interactions. His other notable findings are the discovery of infinite conservation laws of 1-D Hubbard model and its integrability, a new inequality for correlations functions, and exact solution of nonlinear Schroedinger equation with multi soliton solutions. In condensed matter physics, his specialization is in strongly correlated systems, where he worked on the theory of Raman scattering, NMR form factors in high Tc systems, theory of the Hall effect, kinetic antiferromagnetism, and on the fundamental problem of superconductivity from repulsive models. In 2011 he formulated  the non-perturbative theory of extremely correlated Fermi liquids  for understanding the physics  of very strong correlations.



Awards and Honours: Sriram Shastry received the Basic Science Award of TWAS  in 1999. He is an elected Fellow of the American Physical Society, the Indian Academy of Sciences (Bangalore), the National Academy  of Sciences (Prayagraj),  and the  TWAS (Trieste). In 2009  he received the APS Lars Onsager Prize in theoretical statistical physics.