Priyamvada (Priya) Natarajan is a professor in the departments of

astronomy Astronomy () is a natural science that studies astronomical object, celestial objects and phenomena. It uses mathematics, physics, and chemistry in order to explain their origin and chronology of the Universe, evolution. Objects of interest ...

and

physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which r ...

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

. She is noted for her work in mapping

dark matter Dark matter is a hypothetical form of matter thought to account for approximately 85% of the matter in the universe. Dark matter is called "dark" because it does not appear to interact with the electromagnetic field, which means it does not ab ...

and

dark energy In physical cosmology and astronomy, dark energy is an unknown form of energy that affects the universe on the largest scales. The first observational evidence for its existence came from measurements of supernovas, which showed that the univer ...

, particularly with her work in gravitational lensing, and in models describing the assembly and accretion histories of

supermassive black holes 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 ob ...

. She authored the book ''Mapping the Heavens: The Radical Scientific Ideas That Reveal the Cosmos''.

Early life

Priya Natarajan was born in

Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu Coimbatore, also spelt as Koyamputhur (), sometimes shortened as Kovai (), is one of the major metropolitan cities in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. It is located on the banks of the Noyyal River and surrounded by the Western Ghats. Coimbato ...

in India to academic parents. She is one of three children. Natarajan grew up in

Delhi Delhi, officially the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi, is a city and a union territory of India containing New Delhi, the capital of India. Straddling the Yamuna river, primarily its western or right bank, Delhi shares borders w ...

, India and studied at Delhi Public School, R. K. Puram.

Education

Natarajan has undergraduate degrees in physics and mathematics from

M.I.T The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern t ...

. She was also enrolled in the M.I.T. Program in Science, Technology & Society and the M.I.T. Program in Technology and Public Policy from 1991 to 1993. She did her graduate work in theoretical astrophysics at the Institute of Astronomy,

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 ...

, England, receiving a

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...

degree in 1998. There she was a member of

Trinity College Trinity College may refer to: Australia * Trinity Anglican College, an Anglican coeducational primary and secondary school in , New South Wales * Trinity Catholic College, Auburn, a coeducational school in the inner-western suburbs of Sydney, New ...

and was elected to a Title A Research Fellowship that she held from 1997 to 2003. Prior to coming to Yale, she was a visiting postdoctoral fellow at the

Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics The Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics (CITA) is a national research institute funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, located at the University of Toronto in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. CITA's mission is "to ...

in Toronto, Canada.

Research areas

Natarajan has done extensive work in the following fields: *

Gravitational lens A gravitational lens is a distribution of matter (such as a 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 effect is known ...

ing – combining strong and weak lensing analysis techniques; use of lensing as a probe to study galaxy evolution in clusters via local weak shear effects; weak lensing by large-scale structure; using lensing as a probe of the shapes of dark matter halos; and understanding intrinsic correlations in the shapes of galaxies. * Clusters of galaxies – using lensing, X-ray and Sunyaev-Zeldovich data in conjunction to study the dynamics of galaxies in clusters; velocity anisotropy of galaxy orbits; characterizing cluster growth and evolution in phase space and physics of the relaxation process. * Accretion physics – issues of the alignment of the spin of disks and the central black holes; the evolution of warped accretion disks; Lense-Thirring precession; the Blandford-Znajek mechanism, and the accretion history of supermassive black holes. * Issues in galaxy formation and the fueling of quasars – the connection between high redshift galaxies, active galactic nuclei and their central black holes; the black hole mass function; role of quasars and their outflows in galaxy formation; kinematic Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect from quasars; the physics of feedback processes in galaxy formation; stellar contributors to the X-ray background and the evolution of neutral gas with redshift. *

Binary black hole A binary black hole (BBH) is a system consisting of two black holes in close orbit around each other. Like black holes themselves, binary black holes are often divided into stellar binary black holes, formed either as remnants of high-mass binary ...

s – the merger and evolution of supermassive black hole binaries in gas-rich galaxy cores; the electro-magnetic and gravitational wave signatures from these systems; the implications for structure formation at high redshifts. *

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 milli ...

s – the relation of gamma-ray burst rates to the globally averaged star formation rate, the morphology and properties of gamma-ray burst host galaxies in the optical, and sub-mm wave-bands, the SN-GRB connection.

Honors and awards

Natarajan was awarded the Emeline Conland Bigelow Fellowship at the

Radcliffe Institute The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University—also known as the Harvard Radcliffe Institute—is a part of Harvard University that fosters interdisciplinary research across the humanities, sciences, social sciences, arts, a ...

of Harvard University in 2008. In 2009, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. Natarajan was also the 2009 recipient of the India Abroad Foundation's "Face of the Future" Award and the recipient of the award for academic achievement from the Global Organization for the People of Indian Origin (GOPIO). Natarajan was elected a fellow of the

Royal Astronomical Society (Whatever shines should be observed) , predecessor = , successor = , formation = , founder = , extinction = , merger = , merged = , type = NGO ...

in 2009, the

American Physical Society The American Physical Society (APS) is a not-for-profit membership organization of professionals in physics and related disciplines, comprising nearly fifty divisions, sections, and other units. Its mission is the advancement and diffusion of k ...

in 2010, and the

Explorers Club The Explorers Club is an American-based international multidisciplinary professional society with the goal of promoting scientific exploration and field study. The club was founded in New York City in 1904, and has served as a meeting point fo ...

in 2010. She was awarded a JILA (Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics) Fellowship in 2010. In January, 2011 she was awarded an India Empire NRI award for Achievement in the Sciences in New Delhi, India. She was the Caroline Herschel Distinguished Visitor at the

Space Telescope Science Institute The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) is the science operations center for the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), science operations and mission operations center for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), and science operations center for th ...

in Baltimore for 2011–2012. In addition to her current appointments at Yale and Harvard, she also holds the Sophie and Tycho Brahe Professorship, Dark Cosmology Center,

Niels Bohr Institute The Niels Bohr Institute (Danish: ''Niels Bohr Institutet'') is a research institute of the University of Copenhagen. The research of the institute spans astronomy, geophysics, nanotechnology, particle physics, quantum mechanics and biophysics ...

at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark and was recently elected to an honorary professorship for life at the University of Delhi. She is on the scientific advisory board of '' Nova ScienceNow''.

References

External links

Yale Astronomy Department webpage

Guggenheim Fellows webpage

Radcliffe Fellows webpage

{{DEFAULTSORT:Natarajan, Priyamvada Indian astrophysicists American women astronomers Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Indian cosmologists Indian women physicists Indian emigrants to the United States Yale University faculty Scientists from Tamil Nadu People from Coimbatore Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Science alumni Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge Delhi Public School alumni Fellows of the Royal Astronomical Society 20th-century Indian astronomers 21st-century Indian astronomers 20th-century American scientists 21st-century American scientists 20th-century Indian women scientists 21st-century Indian women scientists 21st-century American women 20th-century Indian physicists 21st-century Indian physicists 20th-century American women Scientific American people Fellows of the American Physical Society