Who is Priyamvada Natarajan, Indian-origin astrophysicist featured in TIME’s 100 most influential list?

Priyamvada Natarajan is a Joseph S. and Sophia S. Fruton Professor and Chair of Astronomy and professor of physics in Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

At Yale, where she is a faculty member since 2000, Natarajan is a Joseph S. and Sophia S. Fruton Professor and Chair of Astronomy and professor of physics in Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS). (campuspress.yale.edu)

Theoretical astrophysicist Priyamvada Natarajan was on Wednesday featured in Time Magazine’s 2024 list of 100 most influential people.

The prestigious list, published annually, includes global leaders, titans of industry, athletes, media superstars, and pioneers in creative fields.

Talking about Natarajan in the TIME article, American astrophysicist Shep Doeleman wrote, “Priya has a knack for pursuing the most creative research, and as a fellow astronomer, I am always inspired by her work. Her latest result takes us one step closer to understanding our cosmic beginnings.”

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Doeleman says, “In November, a novel approach developed years ago by Natarajan brought us closer to understanding a basic mystery in astronomy: How do the supermassive black holes that lurk at the centers of most galaxies form?”

Who is Priyamvada Natarajan?

Born in Coimbatore, Natarajan did her schooling in New Delhi and received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from MIT, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She then went on to pursue a PhD from Cambridge University in 1999, where she was the first woman in Astrophysics to be elected a Fellow at Trinity College.

Her work maps the ‘invisible universe’ — “black holes and their relationship to the formation and evolution of galaxies going back to the earliest stages of the universe”, writes YaleNews.

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She’s also been a recipient of numerous honors, including a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Physical Society, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She also received Guggenheim and Radcliffe fellowships.

Natarajan is also the author of the critically acclaimed book Mapping the Heavens: The Radical Scientific Ideas That Reveal the Cosmos (2016).

Speaking to YaleNews about the TIME honour, Natarajan said she suspected that the email from the magazine’s editor might be a spam, but now recognises what an honor and privilege it is. “It sends a message that people working in science can be seen as influential, and that is very gratifying,” she was quoted as saying.