Five Indian students won gold at this year’s International Physics Olympiad. The programme that trained them has spent 27 years building scientific talent—and seen most of it leave the country.
The first theory question at this year’s International Physics Olympiad was on the thermodynamics of paramagnetic cooling, a technique developed in the 1930s to cool matter below one kelvin. Modern versions of the same technique are still used to cool experiments to millikelvin temperatures.
Students had to analyse how energy and entropy changed during each stage of the cooling process. When a strong magnetic field is applied, the magnetic moments of a paramagnetic salt align. If the salt remains in contact with a cold reservoir at this stage, the reduction in entropy is released as heat. The salt is then isolated and the magnetic field is gradually reduced. As the spins become disordered again, they draw energy from the crystal itself, causing its temperature to fall.
To score full marks, students had to analyse successive stages of magnetisation and demagnetisation while relating magnetic field, temperature and heat capacity without violating the second law of thermodynamics.
This material is usually taught in the second or third year of an undergraduate physics degree, if at all. At this year’s Olympiad in Bucaramanga, Colombia, it appeared as the first question in a five-hour examination.
The 56th International Physics Olympiad, held from 5 to 12 July, brought together 381 students from 87 countries. Each country sent its best school-level physics students. India’s team comprised Kanishk Jain of Pune, Riddhesh Anant Bendale of Indore, Rishit Garg of Delhi, Shresth Suraiya of Mumbai and Svarit Joshi of Ahmedabad.
All five won gold medals, placing India joint first alongside China, Russia, South Korea, Taiwan and Kazakhstan. These are all countries that have invested heavily in science education over many years.
Team leader Professor Anwesh Mazumdar of the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education (HBCSE) said afterwards that the students left examiners with very little scope to deduct marks across both the theory and experimental papers.
The achievement reflected more than the performance of five exceptional students. It was also the result of a system that has been built over nearly three decades. HBCSE, a unit of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research funded by the Department of Atomic Energy, runs India’s Physics Olympiad programme, conducts the national training camp in Mumbai and selects the five students who represent the country.
One government department finds the physicists through TIFR and HBCSE, and has now begun funding the laboratories meant to keep them.
Around eight per cent of participants at the International Physics Olympiad win gold medals. According to Mazumdar, the Indian team’s theory papers were close to perfect and their laboratory performance was equally strong.
India had previously achieved a clean sweep of five gold medals only once, in 2018. This was only the second such performance in the country’s 27 appearances at the competition.
The result also highlights another aspect of India’s Physics Olympiad programme. Over the past 27 years, the country has built one of the world’s strongest systems for identifying and training young physics talent, almost entirely through public funding. However, it has been less successful at creating enough opportunities for many of those students to spend their research careers in India.
Besides leading India’s Olympiad team, Mazumdar also maintains the programme’s alumni database. The database shows that about 64 per cent of India’s Physics Olympiad medallists eventually complete a PhD, but only about 32 per cent settle in India. In other words, roughly two out of every three go on to build their careers abroad.
The examination itself helps explain why success at the International Physics Olympiad demands a different kind of preparation from India’s mainstream entrance examinations.
The syllabus broadly covers first-year undergraduate physics: mechanics, electromagnetism, optics, thermodynamics and special relativity. The questions, however, require students to apply those concepts in unfamiliar situations.
The second theory problem dealt with the photoionisation of ozone. It was based on the photoelectric effect for which Albert Einstein received the Nobel Prize. A photon transfers its energy to an electron. Part of that energy overcomes the electron’s binding energy, while the remainder becomes the electron’s kinetic energy.
The principle is straightforward. A photon can eject ozone’s outermost electron only if it carries more than about 12.5 electronvolts of energy. If its energy falls below that threshold, ionisation does not occur.
The problem did not stop there. Students also had to calculate the probability of ionisation using a quantity known as the cross-section and relate the behaviour of the emitted electrons to the molecular structure of ozone. Solving it required them to move comfortably between quantum physics, molecular physics and atmospheric science.
Another question focused on electron-positron annihilation and pair production. Students were expected to work with concepts such as gamma rays of 511 kiloelectronvolts, invariant mass and centre-of-momentum frames.
Each of these values follows directly from established physical principles. A positron has the same mass as an electron but the opposite electric charge. When an electron and a positron annihilate each other at rest, their mass is converted into energy, producing two gamma-ray photons of 511 kiloelectronvolts moving in opposite directions to conserve momentum.
The reverse process is pair production. A gamma-ray photon with sufficient energy can produce an electron-positron pair, but only in the vicinity of a nucleus, which absorbs the recoil needed to conserve momentum. These are topics normally introduced at university level. Olympiad participants were expected to solve problems based on them under examination conditions.
What the 2026 olympiad asked, and the university year at which the same physics is normally taught.
The experimental paper, held on a different day, lasted another five hours.
Students had to investigate heat transfer and thermodynamic processes in fluids using laboratory equipment they had never seen before. They were given no prescribed method. They had to design the experiment, collect measurements, estimate uncertainties and justify their conclusions.
At this level, careful treatment of experimental uncertainty often determines the final rankings.
None of these questions reward the strengths that India’s coaching industry has become known for. Coaching centres excel at training students to recognise familiar problem types and solve them quickly under time pressure. Olympiad questions are deliberately designed to avoid such patterns.
There are no standard templates, shortcut methods or formula sheets that lead directly to the answer. Students must work through problems they have never encountered before and rely on their understanding of physics.
Developing that level of understanding takes years rather than months. India’s Physics Olympiad programme has built it through a sustained system of selection and training.
The Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education (HBCSE), a constituent unit of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research under the Department of Atomic Energy, oversees India’s Physics Olympiad programme. Students first qualify through an examination conducted by the Indian Association of Physics Teachers. A smaller group progresses to the Indian National Physics Olympiad before attending a selection-cum-training camp at HBCSE in Mumbai. Five students are then chosen to represent India at the International Physics Olympiad.
This year’s Indian team was led by Professor M. Mazumdar of HBCSE-TIFR and Dr Leena Joshi of St Xavier’s College, Mumbai. The scientific observers were Professor Ananda Dasgupta of IISER Kolkata and Nisha Kelkar of Gogate-Joglekar College in Ratnagiri.
India has maintained a consistently strong record at the International Physics Olympiad. Across its 27 appearances, about 44 per cent of Indian participants have won gold medals and around 41 per cent have won silver. Every Indian participant over the past decade has returned with a medal. Of those medals, about 62 per cent have been gold and the remaining 38 per cent silver.
Across 27 appearances the medal rate has risen steadily, and every Indian participant has come home with one in the past 10 years.
Those results reflect a selection and training system that has been refined over nearly three decades.
But the medals are only part of the story. Many of the students who pass through India’s Physics Olympiad programme eventually leave the country.
There are valid reasons why that should not automatically be seen as a problem. These students have earned opportunities at some of the world’s best universities through exceptional ability and years of hard work. Few would turn down a fully funded place at institutions such as MIT, Princeton or Stanford.
Scientific research is also an international enterprise. Researchers usually work where the strongest laboratories, funding and collaborators are available, and those remain concentrated in the United States.
Individual students should therefore remain free to pursue the opportunities available to them.
At the same time, where researchers choose to build their careers also depends on the opportunities available at home.
Evidence from other sectors suggests that migration responds to changes in the domestic ecosystem. A survey of 20,000 IIT graduates found that 41 per cent of those who graduated in the early 2000s settled abroad. Among graduates from post-2010 cohorts, the figure fell to less than 16 per cent.
The decline coincided with the rapid expansion of India’s software industry and startup ecosystem, which created more high-quality jobs within the country.
Scientific researchers are likely to respond to similar incentives. Better laboratories, larger research grants, stronger universities and greater opportunities to pursue ambitious work in India would all make it easier for more scientists to remain.
Some of those changes have already begun.
The Anusandhan National Research Foundation has been established to strengthen research funding in Indian universities. In 2025, the government also approved a ₹1 lakh crore Research, Development and Innovation Fund to support long-term scientific and technological research. Fellowship programmes aimed at bringing Indian researchers back from overseas have also expanded.
These measures are unlikely to produce immediate results. India’s Physics Olympiad programme itself took nearly three decades of sustained public investment to become one of the world’s strongest. Building a research ecosystem capable of retaining more of those students is likely to require a similar commitment.
The achievement in Bucaramanga therefore represents both a success and a reminder of the work that remains.
Over two five-hour examinations, five Indian school students solved some of the most demanding physics problems set anywhere in the world. They performed so well that, according to their team leader, examiners found very little scope to deduct marks.
Their names—Kanishk Jain, Riddhesh Anant Bendale, Rishit Garg, Shresth Suraiya and Svarit Joshi—will briefly appear in the news before public attention moves elsewhere.
India has already shown that it can identify and train world-class young physicists. The next challenge is to build enough world-class research opportunities that more of them choose to spend their careers in the country.
Kishan Kumar is a graduate in Economics from the University of Delhi, currently working in the political communication space. He focuses on narrative-building, strategic messaging, and public discourse, with a strong interest in politics, policy, and media.
He posts on X from @FreezingHindoo.