Priyamvada Natarajan

Theoretical astrophysicist Priyamvada Natarajan is the Joseph S. and Sophia S. Fruton Professor of Astronomy, a Professor of Physics, Chair of the Astronomy Department, and Chair of the Women Faculty Forum at Yale University. She is interested in cosmology, gravitational lensing and black hole physics.

She is noted for her work probing the nature of dark matter and dark energy, using gravitational lensing, and for developing models that describe the assembly and growth histories of black holes in the universe. She is also the author of the critically acclaimed book Mapping the Heavens: The Radical Scientific Ideas That Reveal the Cosmos (2016).

Natarajan’s research work and original contributions to astrophysics have been recognized with many awards and honors, including the Emeline Conland Bigelow Fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University; a Guggenheim Fellowship; the India Abroad Foundation’s “Face of the Future” Award; an India Empire NRI award for Achievement in the Sciences and the award for academic achievement from the Global Organization for the People of Indian Origin (GOPIO). She is an elected fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, the American Physical Society and the Explorers Club.

In addition to her faculty position at Yale, Natarajan holds the Sophie and Tycho Brahe Professorship at the Niels Bohr Institute of the University of Copenhagen, Denmark and an honorary professorship for life at the University of Delhi, India. She is an Affiliate at the Black Hole Initiative at Harvard University and and Associate Member of the Center for Computational Astrophysics at the Flatiron Institute in New York.