Arvind Kumar (academic)

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Arvind Kumar is an Indian physicist and educationist. He was the Centre Director of the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education (HBCSE) in Mumbai from 1994 to 2008. He received the Padma Shri in 2010 for his work in science education and is a Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, India. He has also won the TWAS regional award for Science Education.

Born on 15 October 1943, Kumar earned his PhD in theoretical physics from the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) in Mumbai in 1969. He did postdoctoral work at CERN in Geneva and at the University of London. He then taught in the Department of Physics at Bombay University for about twelve years, focusing on theoretical high energy physics.

Kumar joined HBCSE as a Professor in 1984. After the founder-director V. G. Kulkarni retired, Kumar became Centre Director in 1994 and served until his retirement in 2008. He continued to be active as Raja Ramanna Fellow at HBCSE until October 2013, and has since been involved with the Centre for Excellence in Basic Sciences in Mumbai as visiting faculty and visiting scientist at HBCSE.

He has played a key role in the science Olympiad movement, helping HBCSE become the national nodal centre for Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Astronomy, and Mathematics Olympiads. He also helped launch the National Initiative for Undergraduate Science. Kumar contributed to shaping the National Curriculum Framework (NCF 2005) as a member of the Steering Committee and as the Chair of the National Focus Group on the Teaching of Science.

In recognition of his work, Kumar was awarded several honors, including the TWAS regional award for Science Education and the Padma Shri in 2010.