Tathagat Avatar Tulsi Became IIT Professor at Age 22, But is Now Jobless. Know His Story

Tathagat Avatar Tulsi is a child prodigy and a well-known physicist. He was born in Bihar on September 9, 1987. Tulsi finished high school when he was just 9 years old, got a BSc degree from Patna Science College when he was 11, and completed his MSc there when he was 12. When Tulsi was just 17 years old, he went to the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bangalore and started pursuing his PhD programme.

The head of the physics department at that time said he was a “good boy, very lovable and working to achieve his goals” according to a report by The Statesman. In 2001, Tulsi made headlines when the Indian government chose him to attend a conference with Nobel laureates in Germany.

After the duration of five years, Tathagat Avatar Tulsi completed his PhD in 2009 when he was 21 years old. He wrote his thesis on a topic called “Generalizations of the Quantum Search Algorithm.” He also worked on a research paper with Lov Grover called “A New Algorithm for Fixed-point Quantum Search,” but it was never published, as per The Statesman.

Post his PhD, IIT-Mumbai offered Tathagat Avatar Tulsi a job as an Assistant Professor on a temporary basis for new PhD graduates in July 2010. Unfortunately, in 2019, he lost his job. According to Tathagat Avatar Tulsi, the institute fired him because he had to take a long break due to illness.

In 2011, Tulsi got very sick with a high fever and was diagnosed with an allergy. This illness continued for two more years, and he left Mumbai in 2013 after taking a four-year leave from IIT Bombay. He never returned to Mumbai because of his allergy. Finally, in July 2019, he was let go from his job. In August 2021, his application for a different position was rejected by then-President Ramnath Kovind.

According to the report, Tathagat Avatar Tulsi is jobless right now and is living with his brother in Patna. During an interview with BBC, Tulsi opened up about his plan to go to the Delhi High Court. He’s studying law for this purpose. He wants to move to a different IIT (Indian Institute of Technology).