The Nobel Prize for Physics, 2017, which was given for the detection of gravitational waves is a “proud moment” for India also, the Department of Science and Technology (DST) said on Friday.



It said the discovery papers were co-authored by 39 Indian authors/scientists from nine institutions.



“An opportunity for India to take leadership in this field has opened up with the LIGO-India mega-science project that was granted ‘in-principle’ approval by the Union Cabinet on February 17, 2016,” it added.



The department said LIGO-India project was “on track” for commencing operations by 2024.



“A LIGO-India Apex committee, together with the LIGO-India Project Management Board (LI-PMB) and LIGO-India Scientific Management Board (LI-SMB), were constituted in August 2016 to oversee the project execution. There has been a rapid pace of progress since then,” the DST said.



The 2017 Nobel Prize for Physics has been conferred on three scientists — Rainer Weiss, Barry C Barish and Kip S Thorne — under the LIGO Project for their discovery of gravitational waves, 100 years after Einstein’s theory of General Relativity predicted it.



Indian scientists, who are co-authors of the discovery paper, are from CMI Chennai, ICTS-TIFR Bengaluru, IISER-Kolkata, IISER-Trivandrum, IIT-Gandhinagar, IPR Gandhinagar, IUCAA Pune, RRCAT Indore and TIFR Mumbai, the DST said.



“This is a proud moment for India also,” it said.



The department said Indian scientist C V Vishveshvara of RRI, Bengaluru and S V Dhurandhar of IUCAA, Pune and “some others” from India made “seminal contributions to this field which contributed towards the principles behind the LIGO Detector”.



“The group led by Bala Iyer at the Raman Research Institute (RRI) in collaboration with scientists in France had pioneered the mathematical calculations used to model gravitational wave signals from orbiting black holes and neutron stars,” the department said.



Theoretical work that combined black holes and gravitational waves was published by Vishveshvara in 1970.



“These contributions are prominently cited in the discovery paper.” the department said.