Who was the first recipient of the Vigyan Ratna Puraskar?

The Rashtriya Vigyan Puraskar (RVP) is the Government of India's unified national science awards scheme, instituted in 2024. It has four tiers — Vigyan Ratna (lifetime achievement, the highest tier), Vigyan Shri (distinguished contribution), Vigyan Yuva-Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award (young scientists), and Vigyan Team (team achievement) — and it replaced several older, separately administered science honours.

In the inaugural RVP ceremony held in 2024, Govindarajan Padmanabhan, a distinguished biochemist long associated with the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, was conferred the Vigyan Ratna award, making him the first person to receive this top tier of the new scheme.

Why the other names do not fit:

• Jayant Bhalchandra Udgaonkar — a structural biologist known for research on protein folding and misfolding — was honoured in the same 2024 ceremony, but in the Vigyan Shri tier, not Vigyan Ratna.

• Avesh Kumar Tyagi — an atomic-energy scientist at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) — likewise received a Vigyan Shri award in 2024, not the Vigyan Ratna.

• Umesh Varshney — a molecular biologist — was also a 2024 Vigyan Shri awardee, not a Vigyan Ratna recipient.

Since Vigyan Ratna is the specific tier the question asks about, and Govindarajan Padmanabhan is the scientist who received it in the scheme's first edition, he is the correct answer.