Priyamvada Natarajan: Indian on Time’s Most Influential List

Priyamvada Natarajan is an astrophysicist who has been recognized for her global influence. As a professor at Yale University, she chairs the Astronomy department and is the Chairperson of the Women Faculty Forum. She also serves as the Director of Yale’s Franke Program in Science and the Humanities.

Ms Natarajan’s academic journey began with undergraduate degrees in Physics and Mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), followed by studies in the History and Philosophy of Science. She later earned her PhD at the University of Cambridge, where she conducted research on the interactions of black holes with their host galaxies and the broader cosmos, using simulations and models. In 2022, Ms Natarajan received the Liberty Science Center’s Genius Award and has also been honored with fellowships from various institutions such as the American Physical Society (APS), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Radcliffe Institute.

She is also known as the author of ‘Mapping the Heavens: The Radical Scientific Ideas that Reveal the Cosmos’ which came out in 2016.