Today, Thursday, August 22, President Droupadi Murmu conferred the first-ever Vigyan Ratna Puraskar. India's top science award was presented to noted biochemist and former director of the Bengaluru-based Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Govindrajan Padmanabhan. This was stated in a report by PTI.

At an award ceremony in the Ganatantra Mandapam of Rashtrapati Bhawan, the President also conferred 13 Vigyan Shri Puraskar, 18 Vigyan Yuva-Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prizes and one Vigyan Team award, marking the first investiture ceremony for science awards.

Further, the team of scientists and engineers who worked on the Chandrayaan-3 mission were honoured with the Vigyan Team award, which the project director of the mission P Veeramuthuvel received.

All the awardees received a medal and a citation for their outstanding achievements in their respective fields.

Among the 13 recipients of the Vigyan Shri awards were:

- Annapurni Subramaniam, Director of Bengaluru-based Indian Institute of Astrophysics

- Anandharamakrishnan C, director of Thiruvananthapuram-based National Institute of Interdisciplinary Science and Technology

- Avesh Kumar Tyagi, Director of the chemistry group at the Bhabha Atomic Research Institute

- Prof Syed Wajih Ahmad Naqvi of Lucknow-based Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR)-National Botanical Research Institute

Furthermore, the Vigyan Yuva-Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar awards were given to:

- Climate scientist Roxy Mathew Koll of the Pune-base Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology

- Prof Vivek Polshettiwar of Tata Institute of Fundamental Research and Prof Vishal Rai of Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research (IISER) - Bhopal

- Krishna Murthy S L of the Indian Institute of Rice Research and Swarup Kumar Parida of the National Institute of Plant Genome Research.

Among the Vigyan Yuva awardees were:

- Prof Radhakrishnan Mahalakshmi of IISER-Bhopal

- Aravind Penmasta of IISc, Bengaluru

- Abhilash of the CSIR-National Metallurgical Laboratory, Jamshedpur

- Radha Krishna Ganti of IIT-Madras

- Purbi Saikia of the Central University of Jharkhand

- Bappi Paul of the National Forensic Sciences University, Gandhinagar

In addition to this, Urbasi Sinha of the Raman Research Institute, Bangalore; Digendranath Swain of the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, Thiruvananthapuram; Prashant Kumar of the Space Applications Centre, Ahmedabad; and Prof Prabhu Rajagopal of IIT-Madras also received the Vigyan Yuva awards.