Prof. Usha Bhosle: India is a land, which from ancient times has been infused with a spirit of inquiry. Indians have initiated several pioneering and remarkable efforts in the fields of Science in the past as well as during present times, which has been their unique contribution to the progress of humanity. It is with the desire to commemorate and salute this Spirit in our women scientists and also to honour their originality of thought and research that the Stree Shakti Science Samman award has been instituted in 2000.
Professor Usha Bhosle joined the School of Mathematics, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research as a research scholar in 1973. Over the decades, she has emerged as a leading expert in the world on the theory of vector bundles and associated topics in Algebraic Geometry.
Professor Bhosle has made important contributions to the theory of moduli spaces of vector bundles, principal bundles and parabolic bundles on hyperelliptic curves and also on nodal curves. In the 1990s she introduced the notion of `generalized parabolic bundles' on curves, which has been useful over the years in further advances in the subject. She has also been active as a lecturer and as a teacher/guide of PhD students.
Professor Bhosle is the recipient of a number of honours and recognitions ,including Fellowship of all three Indian Academies, Senior Associateship of ICTP Trieste, and an invitation to give the Ramaswamy Aiyer Memorial Award lecture. This award to Prof. Bhosle is in recognition of her outstanding research accomplishments in Algebraic geometry, and for being an inspiring example of what a determined women can achieve, overcoming prejudices and a personal tragedy.
We are privileged to confer on her Stree Shakti Science Samman for the year 2010.
