Yale astrophysicist Priyamvada Natarajan has been elected to the American Astronomical Society in recognition of her seminal research on the subject of black holes and dark matter physics. She is one of the 21 new fellows that the Society announced on Feb 1.
Natarajan was born in Coimbatore, and did her early schooling in Delhi before moving to the United States for her undergraduate degree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She then went on to complete her PhD from Cambridge University and has been a faculty member at Yale since 2000.
Natarajan has received many awards and honors over the course of her illustrious career and she is currently the Joseph S. and Sophia S. Fruton Professor and Chair of Astronomy and professor of physics at Yale.
The Astronomical Society dates back to 1899 and boasts of a distinguished membership of astronomers, physicists, geologists and engineers who work in the field of astronomical sciences. According to their election announcement, the Society chose Natarajan as a Fellow for her “seminal contributions to our understanding of the nature of dark matter and black hole physics, and for the development of a brand-new framework that enables mapping the detailed distribution of dark matter on small scales within galaxy clusters using gravitational lensing.”
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