Meet the educators that were honored with the Padma awards 2021

The Padma awards, the highest civilian honours in India, were handed over at an offline ceremony recently.

Among the 119 recipients, more than 20 were honoured for their contribution to education. Some of them are:

T. Pradeep (Padma Shri for Science and Engineering)

A professor at IIT Madras, Pradeep is widely recognised for his pioneering work on material science and nanotechnology commercialisation for affordable clean water. He was also chosen for the prestigious Nikkei Asia Prizes 2020 in Science and Technology category.

Sudhir Kumar Jain (Padma Shri for Science and Engineering)

The IIT Gandhinagar director has made major contributions to earthquake engineering education, research, and practice with a focus on needs of India and other developing countries. Jain is an internationally reputable scholar of earthquake engineering and a passionate academic administrator. Currently serving his third term as director of IIT Gandhinagar, he is the institute’s founding director and took charge in June 2009. He describes this achievement as “a collective recognition of the entire community’s efforts, sacrifices and hard work”.

Harish Chandra Verma (Padma Shri for Science and Engineering)

He is a physics educator and researcher, who is famous for his two-volume book Concepts of Physics that revolutionised Physics lessons in schools. He taught at IIT Kanpur for 38 years before retiring in 2017. Verma’s choice has been celebrated on the worldwide web.

Usha Yadav (Padma Shri for Literature and Education)

She has written about 100 books in Hindi in various genres over the past five decades. Her selected works are included in textbooks of several state boards. An alumnus of Kanpur University, Yadav credits her success to the literary environment of Kanpur. Her first poem was published in the school magazine when she was in Class IX and she has never looked back after that. Having completed her D'Litt in Agra, she taught at Bhimrao Ambedkar University till retirement.

Ram Yatna Shukla (Padma Shri, Sanskrit Scholar, author and teacher )

He is the president of Kashi Vidwat Parishad and is popularly called Abhinav Panini for his contribution towards inventing new ways of Sanskrit grammar and Vedanta teaching and modernisation.

Nanda Prusty (Padma Shri in the field of Literature and Education)

At 102, Nanda Sir continues to provide free education to children and adults at Jajpur, Odisha. He could not study beyond Class VII because of financial trouble. But his motto has been to eradicate illiteracy Prusty. His informal school functions from a makeshift hut in the village. It opens at dawn and runs seven days a week till 9pm for children as well as senior citizens. On receiving his award, Prusty raised his hands to bless President Ram Nath Kovind. The gesture went viral on social media.

Srikant Madhav Datar (Padma Shri in the field of Education)

He is the George F. Baker Professor of Administration and Dean of Harvard Business School. Datar has several research and course development interests. He has also developed two new courses on Developing Mindsets for Innovative Problem Solving and Managing with Data Science. He has served on the editorial board of several journals and presented his research to academic and executive audiences in North America, South America, Asia, Africa, and Europe. He was also selected by Thinkers 50 India as one of 50 Indian Management Thinkers who had an impact on the theory and practice of management in 2015.