Who Is Priyamvada Natarajan, Indian-Origin Astrophysicist On Time's '100 Most Influential¡¯ List
Time magazine has named Priyamvada Natarajan, an Indian-origin astronomer as one of the 100 most influential people of 2024. Priyamvada, also called Priya is a professor in the departments of astronomy and physics at Yale University.
Thought it was a spam?
According to Yale News, Priyamvada was stunned and even thought it was a spam when she got an email from Time editors telling her about the honor.
¡°I¡¯m still pretty stunned by it. I realize what an honor and privilege this is. It sends a message that people working in science can be seen as influential, and that is very gratifying,¡± Priyamvada, the Joseph S. and Sophia S. Fruton Professor and Chair of Astronomy and professor of physics in Yale¡¯s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, said.
Who is?Priyamvada Natarajan
Born in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, Priyamvada did her schooling at DPS RK Puram in Delhi.
Priyamvada has undergraduate degrees in physics and mathematics from MIT and a Ph.D in theoretical astrophysics at the Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge.
Her areas of interest include cosmology, gravitational lensing and black hole physics.
Priyamvada's study on mapping dark matter
Priyamvada is noted for her work in mapping dark matter and dark energy, particularly with her work in gravitational lensing, and in models describing the assembly and accretion histories of supermassive black holes.?
According to the Black Hole Initiative, Priyamvada's research interests in black hole physics are focused on the formation, fueling, and feedback from supermassive black holes over cosmic time. She develops empirically motivated simulations and models for understanding the growth and evolution of black hole populations within the larger cosmological context.?
Study on black holes
The Time noted that a novel approach developed years ago by Priyamvada had brought us closer to under?standing a basic mystery in astron?omy.?
"How do the supermassive black holes that lurk at the centers of most galaxies form? She had speculated that they might have gotten a jump start in the very early universe if clouds of gas collapsed to form massive black-hole ¡°seeds¡± that then grew within their host galaxies over billions of years," it noted.
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