Priyamvada Natarajan
Priyamvada Natarajan is the Joseph S. and Sophia S. Fruton Professor of Astronomy and Physics at Yale. She is an astrophysicist with research interests in cosmology, gravitational lensing, and black hole physics. One of her research projects involves mapping the detailed distribution of dark matter in the universe exploiting the bending of light en-route to us from distant galaxies. She also works on deriving and understanding the mass assembly history of black holes over cosmic time. She proposed a formation scenario for an early population of massive black holes via direct collapse of gas and predicted properties for their host galaxies. Compelling evidence for this channel of black hole formation was found recently with the discovery of the source UHZ1 detected by JWST and Chandra. Recipient of many awards and honors in recognition of her seminal research contributions, she is an elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Astronomical Society, the American Physical Society, and the Guggenheim and Radcliffe Fellowships. Natarajan also holds the Sophie and Tycho Brahe Professorship at the Dark Cosmology Center in Copenhagen and an honorary professorship for life at Delhi University, India. Her first book Mapping the Heavens was published in 2016. She was named by Time Magazine as one of the 100 most influential people of 2024.
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