Shrinivas Ramchandra Kulkarni (born 4 October 1956) is a US-based astronomer born and raised in India. He is currently a professor of

astronomy Astronomy () is a natural science that studies celestial objects and phenomena. It uses mathematics, physics, and chemistry in order to explain their origin and evolution. Objects of interest include planets, moons, stars, nebulae, g ...

and planetary science at

California Institute of Technology The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech or CIT)The university itself only spells its short form as "Caltech"; the institution considers other spellings such a"Cal Tech" and "CalTech" incorrect. The institute is also occasional ...

, 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 in Maharashtra, into a

Deshastha Madhva Brahmin Deshastha Brahmin is a Hindu Brahmin subcaste mainly from the Indian state of Maharashtra and northern area of the state of Karnataka. Other than these states, according to authors K. S. Singh, Gregory Naik and Pran Nath Chopra, Deshastha B ...

family. His father, Dr. R. H. Kulkarni, was a surgeon based in

Hubballi Hubli, officially known as Hubballi, is a city in the Indian state of Karnataka. The twin cities Hubli–Dharwad form the second largest city in the state by area and population and the largest city in North Karnataka. Hubli is in Dharwad distr ...

and his mother, Vimala Kulkarni, was a home-maker. He is one of four children and has three sisters, Sunanda Kulkarni, Sudha Murthy (wife of

Infosys Infosys Limited is an Indian multinational information technology company that provides business consulting, information technology and outsourcing services. The company was founded in Pune and is headquartered in Bangalore. Infosys is the s ...

founder Narayana Murthy) and Jaishree Deshpande (wife of Gururaj Deshpande). Kulkarni and his sisters grew up in

Karnataka Karnataka (; ISO: , , also known as Karunāḍu) is a state in the southwestern region of India. It was formed on 1 November 1956, with the passage of the States Reorganisation Act. Originally known as Mysore State , it was renamed ''Karnat ...

, 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 The Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi is a public institute of technology located in New Delhi, India. It is one of the 23 IITs created to be Centres of Excellence for training, research and development in science, engineering and technolo ...

in 1978 and his PhD from the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

in 1983.

Career

In 1987, Kulkarni obtained a position as faculty at the

. 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" \n\nads.txt (Authorized Digital Sellers) is an initiative from IAB Technology Laboratory. It specifies a text file that companies can host on their web servers, listing the other companies authorized to sell their products or services. This is des ...

shows that his papers cover following fields: (1) HI absorption studies of

Milky Way Galaxy The Milky Way is the galaxy that includes our Solar System, with the name describing the galaxy's appearance from Earth: a hazy band of light seen in the night sky formed from stars that cannot be individually distinguished by the naked eye. ...

, (2) pulsars,

millisecond pulsar A millisecond pulsar (MSP) is a pulsar with a rotational period less than about 10 milliseconds. Millisecond pulsars have been detected in radio, X-ray, and gamma ray portions of the electromagnetic spectrum. The leading theory for the origin of ...

s, and

globular cluster A globular cluster is a spheroidal conglomeration of stars. Globular clusters are bound together by gravity, with a higher concentration of stars towards their centers. They can contain anywhere from tens of thousands to many millions of membe ...

pulsars, (3)

brown dwarf Brown dwarfs (also called failed stars) are substellar objects that are not massive enough to sustain nuclear fusion of ordinary hydrogen ( 1H) into helium in their cores, unlike a main-sequence star. Instead, they have a mass between the most ...

s and other sub-stellar objects, (4) soft gamma-ray repeaters, (5)

gamma-ray burst In gamma-ray astronomy, gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are immensely energetic explosions that have been observed in distant galaxies. They are the most energetic and luminous electromagnetic events since the Big Bang. Bursts can last from ten millise ...

s, and (6) optical transients. He made significant contributions in these sub-fields of astronomy.

Key discoveries

Kulkarni started off his career as a radio astronomer. He studied

using HI absorption under the guidance of his advisor Carl Heiles, and observed its four arms. The review articles he wrote with Carl Heiles have been highly cited in the field of interstellar medium. He discovered the first

called PSR B1937+21 with

Donald Backer Donald C. Backer (November 9, 1943 – July 25, 2010) was an American astrophysicist who primarily worked in radio astronomy. Backer made important contributions to the understanding and study of pulsars (including the discovery of the first mil ...

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

pulsar in 1987 using a supercomputer. With

Dale Frail Dale A. Frail is a Canadian astronomer working at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) in Socorro, New Mexico. Early life He was born in Canada, spent much of his childhood in Europe, and his professional career has been based in the ...

NRAO The National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) is a federally funded research and development center of the United States National Science Foundation operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc. for the purpose of radio a ...

and Toshio Murakami and his colleagues at ISAS (predecessor of JAXA that was led by Yasuo Tanaka at that time) Kulkarni showed that soft gamma-ray repeaters are

neutron star A neutron star is the collapsed core of a massive supergiant star, which had a total mass of between 10 and 25 solar masses, possibly more if the star was especially metal-rich. Except for black holes and some hypothetical objects (e.g. w ...

s associated with supernova remnants. This discovery eventually led to the understanding that

s with extremely high magnetic field called

magnetar A magnetar is a type of neutron star with an extremely powerful magnetic field (∼109 to 1011 T, ∼1013 to 1015 G). The magnetic-field decay powers the emission of high-energy electromagnetic radiation, particularly X-rays and gamma rays.War ...

s are the soft gamma-ray repeaters.

Caltech The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech or CIT)The university itself only spells its short form as "Caltech"; the institution considers other spellings such a"Cal Tech" and "CalTech" incorrect. The institute is also occasional ...

-NRAO team which he led showed in 1997 that

gamma-ray bursts In gamma-ray astronomy, gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are immensely energetic explosions that have been observed in distant galaxies. They are the most energetic and luminous electromagnetic events since the Big Bang. Bursts can last from ten milli ...

came from extra-galactic sources, and identified optical counterparts. Their research initiated the detailed studies of the sources of

along with the European team led by

Jan van Paradijs Johannes A. van Paradijs (9 June 1946 – 2 November 1999) was a Dutch high-energy astrophysicist. He is best known for discovering the first optical afterglow of a gamma-ray burst, GRB 970228, in February 1997, together with two of his students ...

. He was also a member of the Caltech team that observed the first irrefutable

in 1994 that orbited around a star called

Gliese 229 Gliese 229 (also written as Gl 229 or GJ 229) is a binary system composed of a red dwarf and the first brown dwarf seen by astronomers, 18.8 light years away in the constellation Lepus. The primary component has 58% of the mass of t ...

. His recent work involved Palomar Transient Factory which has succeeded in identifying the new groups of optical transients such as superluminous supernovae, calcium-rich supernovae, and

luminous red nova A luminous red nova (abbr. ''LRN'', pl. ''luminous red novae'', pl.abbr. ''LRNe'') is a stellar explosion thought to be caused by the merging of two stars. They are characterised by a distinct red colour, and a light curve that fades slowly with ...

e. 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

. Recognizing his contribution to astronomy, he was awarded the

Dan David Prize The Dan David Prize is a major international award that recognizes and supports outstanding contributions to the study of history and other disciplines that shed light on the human past. It awards nine prizes of $300,000 each year to outstanding ...

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 Scien ...

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 in 1991, the Jansky Prize in 2002 and the Dan David Prize in 2017. In 2015, he received an

honorary doctorate An honorary degree is an academic degree for which a university (or other degree-awarding institution) has waived all of the usual requirements. It is also known by the Latin phrases ''honoris causa'' ("for the sake of the honour") or ''ad hon ...

from

Radboud University Radboud University (abbreviated as RU, nl, Radboud Universiteit , formerly ''Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen'') is a public research university located in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. The university bears the name of Saint Radboud, a 9th century D ...

in the

Netherlands ) , anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau") , image_map = , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands , established_title = Before independence , established_date = Spanish Netherl ...

Services to the field

Kulkarni has been the Jury Chair for the

Infosys Prize The Infosys Prize is an annual award given to scientists, researchers, engineers and social scientists of Indian origin (not necessarily born in India) by the Infosys Science Foundation and ranks among the highest monetary awards in India to r ...

for the discipline of

Physical Sciences Physical science is a branch of natural science that studies non-living systems, in contrast to life science. It in turn has many branches, each referred to as a "physical science", together called the "physical sciences". Definition Phy ...

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 The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...

, London, in 2001, a member of the

United States National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...

in 2003, an honorary fellow of

Indian Academy of Sciences The Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore was founded by Indian Physicist and Nobel Laureate C. V. Raman, and was registered as a society on 24 April 1934. Inaugurated on 31 July 1934, it began with 65 founding fellows. The first general meet ...

in 2012, and a foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences on 12 September 2016.

References

External links

Royal Society, London

Geology and Planetary Science, Caltech

Personal webpage

Indian Academy of Science

Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences

National Science Foundation: Waterman Prize

National Radio Astronomy Observatory: Jansky Prize

Dan David Prize

Infosys Science Prize Jury Chairs

Frontline - 27 Oct - 9 Nov 2001

- Nature

2001 {{DEFAULTSORT:Kulkarni, Shrinivas Planetary scientists 1956 births Living people California Institute of Technology faculty Fellows of the Royal Society Members of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences 20th-century Indian astronomers Indian emigrants to the United States IIT Delhi alumni University of California, Berkeley alumni American Hindus American people of Marathi descent Scientists from California 21st-century American astronomers 20th-century American physicists American academics of Indian descent Indian scholars