Radha Balakrishnan

Radha Balakrishnan is an Indian physicist. She works at Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai primarily related to nonlinear dynamics and applications in physics.

Balakrishnan pursued her Physics Honours from Delhi University and finished her M.Sc in 1965. She has a Ph.D from Brandeis University where her thesis was one of the earliest studies of quantum crystals on the effects of He impurities in solid He.

During the 1980s, when Balakrishnan returned to India, she worked at the Department of Theoretical Physics, University of Madras as a Research Associate. She joined Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai in 1987. She retired in the year 2004 and since that time, Balakrishnan is continuing her research as a CSIR Emeritus Scientist. Her current research is on Nonlinear Dynamics, Solitons and Applications in Physics, Connections to Classical Differential Geometry.

Radha Balakrishnan is married to V. Balakrishnan who is an Indian theoretical physicist. Their two children, Hari Balakrishnan and Hamsa Balakrishnan, are both faculty members at MIT.

From the 1990s, she had been studying the deep connections between nonlinearity and the differential geometry of curves and surfaces. Balakrishnan received the Tamil Nadu Scientists Award in the Physical Sciences (1999) for her work. She also received INSA’s Professor Darshan Ranganathan Memorial Lecture Award (2005) for original and pioneering contributions in nonlinear dynamics.