Shrinivas Ramchandra Kulkarni (born 4 October 1956) is a US-based astronomer born and raised in India. He is currently a professor of astronomy and
planetary science
Planetary science (or more rarely, planetology) is the scientific study of planets (including Earth), celestial bodies (such as moons, asteroids, comets) and planetary systems (in particular those of the Solar System) and the processes of their f ...
at California Institute of Technology, and he served as director of Caltech Optical Observatory (COO) at California Institute of Technology, in which capacity he oversaw the Palomar and Keck among other telescopes. He is the recipient of a number of awards and honours.
Early life and education
Shrinivas Ramchandra Kulkarni was born on 4 October 1956 in the small town of
Kurundwad
Kurundwad is a town on the banks of the Panchganga river, 55 km from Kolhapur (Kolhapur district) in the Indian state of Maharashtra.
Geography
It is in the southern part of the Indian state of Maharashtra. It is 55 km from the dist ...
in
Maharashtra
Maharashtra (; , abbr. MH or Maha) is a states and union territories of India, state in the western India, western peninsular region of India occupying a substantial portion of the Deccan Plateau. Maharashtra is the List of states and union te ...
, into a Deshastha Madhva Brahmin family. His father, Dr. R. H. Kulkarni, was a surgeon based in Hubballi and his mother, Vimala Kulkarni, was a home-maker. He is one of four children and has three sisters, Sunanda Kulkarni,
Sudha Murthy
Sudha Murty (' Kulkarni; born 19 August 1951) is an Indian educator, author and philanthropist who is chairperson of the Infosys F ...
Gururaj Deshpande
Gururaj Deshpande ("Desh" Deshpande) is an Indian American venture capitalist and entrepreneur, who is best known for co-founding the Chelmsford, MA-based internet equipment manufacturer Sycamore Networks,
Kulkarni and his sisters grew up in Hubballi, Karnataka, and received their schooling at local schools there. He obtained his MS in physics (integrated master's course) from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi in 1978 and his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley in 1983.
Career
In 1987, Kulkarni obtained a position as faculty at the California Institute of Technology. According to his website, he has mentored 64 young scholars by the end of 2016.
Kulkarni is known for making key discoveries that open new sub-fields within astronomy, using wide range of wavelength in observation. ADS shows that his papers cover following fields: (1) HI absorption studies of Milky Way Galaxy, (2)
pulsar
A pulsar (from ''pulsating radio source'') is a highly magnetized rotating neutron star that emits beams of electromagnetic radiation out of its magnetic poles. This radiation can be observed only when a beam of emission is pointing toward Ea ...
Kulkarni started off his career as a radio astronomer. He studied Milky Way Galaxy using HI absorption under the guidance of his advisor Carl Heiles, and observed its four arms. The review articles he wrote with
Carl Heiles
Carl Eugene Heiles (born 1939) is an American astrophysicist noted for his contribution to the understanding of diffuse interstellar matter through observational radio astronomy.
Biography
Heiles was born in Toledo, Ohio. He did his undergradua ...
have been highly cited in the field of interstellar medium.
He discovered the first millisecond pulsar called
PSR B1937+21
PSR may refer to:
Organizations
* Pacific School of Religion, Berkeley, California, US
* Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research
* Physicians for Social Responsibility, US
;Political parties:
* Revolutionary Socialist Party (Portugal) ( ...
with Donald Backer and colleagues, while he was a graduate student. In 1986, he found the first optical counterpart of binary pulsars, while he was a Millikan Fellow at California Institute of Technology. He was instrumental in discovery of the first globular cluster pulsar in 1987 using a supercomputer.
With Dale Frail at NRAO and Toshio Murakami and his colleagues at ISAS (predecessor of
JAXA
The is the Japanese national air and space agency. Through the merger of three previously independent organizations, JAXA was formed on 1 October 2003. JAXA is responsible for research, technology development and launch of satellites into orb ...
supernova remnants
A supernova remnant (SNR) is the structure resulting from the explosion of a star in a supernova. The supernova remnant is bounded by an expanding shock wave, and consists of ejected material expanding from the explosion, and the interstellar mat ...
. This discovery eventually led to the understanding that neutron stars with extremely high magnetic field called magnetars are the soft gamma-ray repeaters.
Caltech-NRAO team which he led showed in 1997 that gamma-ray bursts came from extra-galactic sources, and identified optical counterparts. Their research initiated the detailed studies of the sources of gamma-ray bursts along with the European team led by Jan van Paradijs.
He was also a member of the Caltech team that observed the first irrefutable brown dwarf in 1994 that orbited around a star called Gliese 229.
His recent work involved
Palomar Transient Factory
The Palomar Transient Factory (PTF, obs. code: I41), was an astronomical survey using a wide-field survey camera designed to search for optical transient and variable sources such as variable stars, supernovae, asteroids and comets. The projec ...
which has succeeded in identifying the new groups of optical transients such as superluminous supernovae,
calcium-rich supernova
In astronomy, a calcium-rich supernova (or Calcium-rich transient, Ca-rich SN) is a subclass of supernovae that, in contrast to more well-known traditional supernova classes, are fainter and produce unusually large amounts of calcium. Since their ...
e, and luminous red novae.
The success of his astronomical research is evident by 63 Nature Letters, 7 Science Letters, and total of 479 refereed scientific articles that bear his name by the end of 2015, according to ADS. Recognizing his contribution to astronomy, he was awarded the Dan David Prize in 2017.
Awards and honours
Kulkarni has received many awards and honours, including the NSF's
Alan T. Waterman Award
The Alan T. Waterman Award, named after Alan Tower Waterman, is the United States's highest honorary award for scientists no older than 40, or no more than 10 years past receipt of their Ph.D. It is awarded on a yearly basis by the National Scienc ...
in 1992, the
Helen B. Warner Prize
The Helen B. Warner Prize for Astronomy is awarded annually by the American Astronomical Society to a young astronomer (aged less than 36,
or within 8 years of the award of their PhD) for a significant contribution to observational or theoretical ...
from the
American Astronomical Society
The American Astronomical Society (AAS, sometimes spoken as "double-A-S") is an American society of professional astronomers and other interested individuals, headquartered in Washington, DC. The primary objective of the AAS is to promote the adv ...
Kulkarni has been the Jury Chair for the Infosys Prize for the discipline of Physical Sciences since 2009. The prize is awarded by the Infosys Foundation, whose founder is Kulkarni's brother-in-law, Narayana Murthy.
Kulkarni is a member of as many as four national academies around the globe. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, London, in 2001, a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences in 2003, an honorary fellow of Indian Academy of Sciences in 2012, and a foreign member of the
Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences ( nl, Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, abbreviated: KNAW) is an organization dedicated to the advancement of science and literature in the Netherlands. The academy is housed ...