Tathagat Avatar Tulsi is a renowned physicist who was a child prodigy and was born in Bihar on September 9, 1987. Tulsi graduated from high school at the age of nine, received a BSc from Patna Science College when he was eleven, and finished an MSc there at the age of twelve. Tathaghat Avatar Tulsi attended the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore after earning his MSc, where he went on to earn his PhD in 2009 at the age of 21.
His invitation to work as an Assistant Professor on contract—a non-permanent teaching job for recent PhD graduates—came from IIT-Mumbai in July 2010. Tulsi, however, was fired from his position in 2019. According to him, the institute made the decision to fire him after he took a lengthy leave of absence owing to sickness.
Tulsi was described as a “good boy, very lovable, and working to achieve his goals” by the then-physics department head when he applied to IISC at the age of 17 for a PhD programme. Tulsi made headlines in 2001 after being selected by the Indian government to attend a gathering of Nobel laureates in Germany.
TIME magazine previously referred to Tulsi as one of the most talented Asian children. He received the nicknames “Superteen” by Science, “Physics Prodigy” by The TIMES, and “Master Mind” by The WEEK. On December 13th, 2007, the National Geographic Channel aired Tulsi’s tale as part of the programme My Brilliant Brain.
“Generalisations of the Quantum Search Algorithm” was the topic of Tulsi’s PhD thesis. He and Lov Grover co-authored a research manuscript titled “A New Algorithm for Fixed-point Quantum Search” that was never published.
