Garani Ananthakrishna obtained his Master degree in Physics from the Bangalore University in 1965 and taught for a few years in the Bangalore University and affiliated colleges. He obtained PhD degree from the University of Texas at Austin (1973) and returned to India in 1974. He worked in the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research, Kalpakkam (1975-90) before joining the Materials Research Centre, Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore in 1990. He has been a Visiting Professor at the University of Metz, France (1994-96) on several occasions. He superannuated in 2005 and is currently an Emeritus Professor and INSA Hon. Scientist.

Academic and Research Achievements: Ananthakrishna specializes in applying methods of stochastic processes and dynamical systems to condensed matter physics and materials science problems. His contributions are in the area of collective behaviour of dislocations. He was the first to introduce both stochastic and dynamical systems approach to study collective properties of dislocations. In particular, his model is able to explain most features of the Portevin-Le Chatelier effect, a plastic instability that had lacked explanation for a long time. He has worked on a wide range of topics in materials science, such as martensite transformation, dynamics of peeling of an adhesive tape, general area of sticks-slip dynamics, friction, acoustic emission, quasicrystals, defect physics, etc. He has published over 160 papers and has mentored 10 PhD students.

Awards and Honours: Ananthakrishna is a Fellow of Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore and Asia Pacific Society for Materials.