Somak Raychaudhury ( bn, সোমক রায়চৌধুরী) is an Indian
astrophysicist. He is the Director of the
Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics
The Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA) is an autonomous institution set up by the University Grants Commission of India to promote nucleation and growth of active groups in astronomy and astrophysics in Indian univer ...
(IUCAA), Pune. He is on leave from
Presidency University, Kolkata
Presidency University, Kolkata (formerly known as Presidency College, Kolkata) is a second major public state aided research university located in College Street, Kolkata. Considered as one of best colleges when Presidency College was affili ...
,
India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
, where he is a Professor of Physics, and is also affiliated to the
University of Birmingham
, mottoeng = Through efforts to heights
, established = 1825 – Birmingham School of Medicine and Surgery1836 – Birmingham Royal School of Medicine and Surgery1843 – Queen's College1875 – Mason Science College1898 – Mason Univers ...
, United Kingdom. He is known for his work on stellar mass black holes and
supermassive black hole
A supermassive black hole (SMBH or sometimes SBH) is the largest type of black hole, with its mass being on the order of hundreds of thousands, or millions to billions of times the mass of the Sun (). Black holes are a class of astronomical obj ...
s. His significant contributions include those in the fields of
gravitational lensing
A gravitational lens is a distribution of matter (such as a galaxy cluster, cluster of galaxies) between a distant light source and an observer that is capable of bending the light from the source as the light travels toward the observer. This ...
, galaxy dynamics and large-scale motions in the Universe, including the
Great Attractor
The Great Attractor is a gravitational anomaly in intergalactic space and the apparent central gravitational point of the Laniakea Supercluster. The observed anomalies suggest a localized concentration of mass millions of times more massive than ...
.
Education
Somak Raychaudhury was born in Kolkata (then Calcutta), India. He attended
St Xavier's Collegiate School
, motto_translation = Nothing Beyond
, religious_affiliation = Roman Catholic
, denomination = Jesuits
, patron = Francis Xavier
, established =
, session = April–Ma ...
, Kolkata, from which he ranked second in the
Madhyamik
Madhyamik Pariksha or simply Madhyamik ( bn, মাধ্যমিক) is a centralised examination conducted by the West Bengal Board of Secondary Education (পশ্চিমবঙ্গ মধ্যশিক্ষা পর্ষদ) in West B ...
examination of the West Bengal Board of Secondary Education, 1977. He then studied at St Xavier's College, Kolkata, from which he placed second in the state in the Higher Secondary Examination of the West Bengal Council of Higher Secondary Education. He attended
Presidency College, Calcutta
Presidency University, Kolkata (formerly known as Presidency College, Kolkata) is a second major public state aided research university located in College Street, Kolkata. Considered as one of best colleges when Presidency College was affili ...
, where he completed his BSc degree in Physics in 1983. He then went to complete a BA degree in Physics at
Trinity College, Oxford
(That which you wish to be secret, tell to nobody)
, named_for = The Holy Trinity
, established =
, sister_college = Churchill College, Cambridge
, president = Dame Hilary Boulding
, location = Broad Street, Oxford OX1 3BH
, coordinates ...
,
University of Oxford
, mottoeng = The Lord is my light
, established =
, endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019)
, budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20)
, chancellor ...
, supported by an Inlaks Scholarship from the Inlaks Shivdasani Foundation, where he won a Douglas Sladen Essay prize. He then proceeded to obtain a PhD in Astrophysics from the
University of Cambridge
, mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts.
Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge.
, established =
, other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...
, United Kingdom, as a member of
Churchill College, Cambridge
Churchill College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England. It has a primary focus on science, engineering and technology, but still retains a strong interest in the arts and humanities.
In 1958, a trust was establish ...
, in 1990, supported by an Isaac Newton Studentship. Here, he was a recipient of a
Smith's Prize
The Smith's Prize was the name of each of two prizes awarded annually to two research students in mathematics and theoretical physics at the University of Cambridge from 1769. Following the reorganization in 1998, they are now awarded under the n ...
(J.T. Knight Prize) in 1988. The subject of his doctoral thesis, supervised by
Donald Lynden-Bell
Donald Lynden-Bell CBE FRS (5 April 1935 – 6 February 2018) was a British theoretical astrophysicist. He was the first to determine that galaxies contain supermassive black holes at their centres, and that such black holes power quasars. ...
, FRS, was "Gravity, Galaxies and the 'Great Attractor' Survey".
Career
Somak Raychaudhury became the fourth Director of the
Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics
The Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA) is an autonomous institution set up by the University Grants Commission of India to promote nucleation and growth of active groups in astronomy and astrophysics in Indian univer ...
(IUCAA), Pune India, in September 2015. He was Professor and Head of Physics at
Presidency University, Kolkata
Presidency University, Kolkata (formerly known as Presidency College, Kolkata) is a second major public state aided research university located in College Street, Kolkata. Considered as one of best colleges when Presidency College was affili ...
,
where he was also the Dean of the Faculty of Natural and Mathematical Sciences till August 2015. He remains affiliated to the Astrophysics and Space Research group, School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Birmingham, where he used to be the director of the
Wast Hills Observatory for the period 2003–2012. Prior to this, he was a member of the faculty at the
Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics
The Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA) is an autonomous institution set up by the University Grants Commission of India to promote nucleation and growth of active groups in astronomy and astrophysics in Indian univer ...
,
Pune
Pune (; ; also known as Poona, (List of renamed Indian cities and states#Maharashtra, the official name from 1818 until 1978) is one of the most important industrial and educational hubs of India, with an estimated population of 7.4 million ...
, India. He was a staff member at the
Center for Astrophysics Harvard & Smithsonian, in
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. As part of the Boston metropolitan area, the cities population of the 2020 U.S. census was 118,403, making it the fourth most populous city in the state, behind Boston, ...
, working for the
Chandra X-ray Observatory
The Chandra X-ray Observatory (CXO), previously known as the Advanced X-ray Astrophysics Facility (AXAF), is a Flagship-class space telescope launched aboard the during STS-93 by NASA on July 23, 1999. Chandra is sensitive to X-ray sources 1 ...
. Before this, He was a Smithsonian postdoctoral fellow at the
Center for Astrophysics Harvard & Smithsonian, and a tutor at
Lowell House
Lowell House is one of twelve undergraduate residential Houses at Harvard University, located at 10 Holyoke Place facing Mount Auburn Street between Harvard Yard and the Charles River. Officially, it is named for the Lowell family, but an orna ...
,
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
. Following his PhD, he was a SERC Research Fellow at the
Institute of Astronomy, at the University of Cambridge,
Cambridge
Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...
, and a resident Junior Research fellow at
St. Edmund's College, University of Cambridge.
Raychaudhury's research interests lie in the study of the evolution of galaxies in groups and clusters, and on the
supercluster
A supercluster is a large group of smaller galaxy clusters or galaxy groups; they are among the largest known structures in the universe. The Milky Way is part of the Local Group galaxy group (which contains more than 54 galaxies), which in turn ...
filaments of the cosmic web. He has used optical, X-ray, radio, infrared and ultraviolet observations to understand how the transformations of galaxies are related to their local and global environment. He is involved in developing machine learning algorithms for Astronomical
data mining. He has published over 80 research
papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals on these themes. In addition, he leads a substantial outreach programme involving school students, teachers and the general public. He was one of the key people to start the Indian Astronomy Olympiad, and selected and coached the Indian Olympiad team to top results at the
International Astronomy Olympiad
The International Astronomy Olympiad (IAO) is an internationally recognized annual astronomy scientific-educating event for high school students (14–18 years old), which includes an intellectual competition between these students. It is one of th ...
in 1999 and 2000
. His outreach activities include numerous programmes on radio, television and collaboration with performing artists.
He is a member of the
International Astronomical Union
The International Astronomical Union (IAU; french: link=yes, Union astronomique internationale, UAI) is a nongovernmental organisation with the objective of advancing astronomy in all aspects, including promoting astronomical research, outreac ...
, a Fellow of the
Royal Astronomical Society
(Whatever shines should be observed)
, predecessor =
, successor =
, formation =
, founder =
, extinction =
, merger =
, merged =
, type = NGO ...
, and a Fellow of the
European Astronomical Society
The European Astronomical Society (EAS) is a learned society, founded under the Swiss Civil Code in 1990, as an association to contribute and promote the advancement of astronomy in Europe, and to deal with astronomical matters at a European lev ...
. He is a Life Member of the
Astronomical Society of India,
and was an elected member of its Executive Council during 1998–2000.
Selected publications
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References
External links
Somak Raychaudhury's webpage at Presidency University, KolkataSomak Raychaudhury's homepage at the University of BirminghamSomak Raychaudhury's Publications listedon the NASA
Astrophysics Data System
The SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS) is an online database of over 16 million astronomy and physics papers from both peer reviewed and non-peer reviewed sources. Abstracts are available free online for almost all articles, and full scanned a ...
Somak Raychaudhury at Google Scholar citationsSomak Raychaudhury: Author Searchon
DBLP
DBLP is a computer science bibliography website. Starting in 1993 at Universität Trier in Germany, it grew from a small collection of HTML files and became an organization hosting a database and logic programming bibliography site. Since Nove ...
, the Computer Science bibliography website
Websiteof
University of Birmingham
, mottoeng = Through efforts to heights
, established = 1825 – Birmingham School of Medicine and Surgery1836 – Birmingham Royal School of Medicine and Surgery1843 – Queen's College1875 – Mason Science College1898 – Mason Univers ...
, Wast Hills Observatory
{{DEFAULTSORT:Raychaudhury, Somak
Scientists from Kolkata
Indian astrophysicists
Living people
University of Calcutta alumni
Presidency University, Kolkata alumni
Alumni of Trinity College, Oxford
Alumni of Churchill College, Cambridge
Presidency University, Kolkata faculty
Fellows of St Edmund's College, Cambridge
20th-century Indian physicists
Fellows of the Royal Astronomical Society
Academics of the University of Birmingham
Year of birth missing (living people)