Ramesh Narayan (born in

Mumbai Mumbai ( ; ), also known as Bombay ( ; its official name until 1995), is the capital city of the Indian state of Maharashtra. Mumbai is the financial capital and the most populous city proper of India with an estimated population of 12 ...

India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...

, in 1950) is an

Indian-American Indian Americans are Americans whose ancestry originates wholly or partly from India. The terms Asian Indian and East Indian are used to avoid confusion with Native Americans in the United States, who are also referred to as "Indians" or "Am ...

theoretical astrophysicist, currently the

Thomas Dudley Cabot Thomas Dudley Cabot (May 1, 1897 – June 8, 1995) was an American businessman. He also became the U.S. Department of State's Director of Office of International Security Affairs. Early life Cabot was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His fathe ...

Professor of the Natural Sciences in the Department of Astronomy at

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

. Full member of the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the ...

, Ramesh Narayan is widely known for his contributions on the theory of

black hole A black hole is a massive, compact astronomical object so dense that its gravity prevents anything from escaping, even light. Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity predicts that a sufficiently compact mass will form a black hole. Th ...

accretion processes. He is involved in the

Event Horizon Telescope The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) is a Astronomical interferometer, telescope array consisting of a global network of radio telescopes. The EHT project combines data from several very-long-baseline interferometry (VLBI) stations around Earth, wh ...

project, which led in 2019 to the first image of the event horizon of a black hole. Black hole - Messier 87 crop max res

Education and career path

Ramesh Narayan received a B.Sc. in

physics Physics is the scientific study of matter, its Elementary particle, fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge whi ...

from

Madras University The University of Madras is a public university, public State university (India), state university in Chennai (Madras), Tamil Nadu, India. Established in 1857, it is one of the oldest and most prominent universities in India, incorporated by an ...

and a Ph.D. from

Bangalore University Bangalore University (BU) is a public state university in Bengaluru, Karnataka, India. The university is a part of the Association of Indian Universities (AIU), Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU) and affiliated by University Gra ...

in 1979. After his studies, he spent several years as a

postdoctoral researcher A postdoctoral fellow, postdoctoral researcher, or simply postdoc, is a person professionally conducting research after the completion of their doctoral studies (typically a PhD). Postdocs most commonly, but not always, have a temporary acade ...

at the

Raman Research Institute The Raman Research Institute (RRI) is an institute for scientific research located in Bengaluru, India. It was founded by Nobel laureate Sir C. V. Raman in 1948. Although it began as an institute privately owned by C. V. Raman, it became an ...

in Bangalore. Later on, he moved to the

California Institute of Technology The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech) is a private research university in Pasadena, California, United States. The university is responsible for many modern scientific advancements and is among a small group of institutes ...

(Caltech) in 1983, where he eventually became a senior research fellow. After six years as a faculty member at the

University of Arizona The University of Arizona (Arizona, U of A, UArizona, or UA) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Tucson, Arizona, United States. Founded in 1885 by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, it ...

, he moved to Harvard University in 1991, where he is currently the Thomas Dudley Cabot Professor of

Natural Sciences Natural science or empirical science is one of the branches of science concerned with the description, understanding and prediction of natural phenomena, based on empirical evidence from observation and experimentation. Mechanisms such as peer ...

at the Astronomy Department, which he chaired between 1997 and 2001. He served on the Physical Sciences jury for the

Infosys Prize The Infosys Prize is an annual award granted to scientists, researchers, engineers and social scientists of Indian origin (not necessarily born in India) by the Infosys Science Foundation and ranks among the highest monetary awards for researc ...

from 2011 to 2014.

Fellowships

Ramesh Narayan is currently a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences, a fellow of the

Royal Society of London The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, r ...

, a fellow of the

American Association for the Advancement of Science The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is a United States–based international nonprofit with the stated mission of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific responsib ...

and a fellow of the

World Academy of Sciences The World Academy of Sciences for the advancement of science in developing countries (TWAS) is a merit-based science academy established for developing countries, uniting more than 1,400 scientists in some 100 countries. Its principal aim is t ...

Scientific contributions

Ramesh Narayan is widely known for his broad contributions to theoretical astrophysics, specifically to high-energy astrophysics. He wrote landmark studies on

gamma-ray burst In gamma-ray astronomy, gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are extremely energetic events occurring in distant Galaxy, galaxies which represent the brightest and most powerful class of explosion in the universe. These extreme Electromagnetic radiation, ele ...

accretion disk An accretion disk is a structure (often a circumstellar disk) formed by diffuse material in orbital motion around a massive central body. The central body is most frequently a star. Friction, uneven irradiance, magnetohydrodynamic effects, and ...

s, black holes,

gravitational lens A gravitational lens is matter, such as a galaxy cluster, cluster of galaxies or a point particle, that bends light from a distant source as it travels toward an observer. The amount of gravitational lensing is described by Albert Einstein's Ge ...

ing and

neutron star A neutron star is the gravitationally collapsed Stellar core, core of a massive supergiant star. It results from the supernova explosion of a stellar evolution#Massive star, massive star—combined with gravitational collapse—that compresses ...

s. He is well known for his works on numerical simulations on accretion flows around

supermassive black holes A supermassive black hole (SMBH or sometimes SBH) is the largest type of black hole, with its mass being on the order of hundreds of thousands, or millions to billions, of times the mass of the Sun (). Black holes are a class of astronomical o ...

and the possibility of forming jets, via the

Blandford–Znajek process The Blandford–Znajek process is a mechanism for the extraction of energy from a rotating black hole, introduced by Roger Blandford and Roman Znajek in 1977. This mechanism is the most preferred description of how Astrophysical jet, astrophysical ...

. He significantly improved GRRMHD codes to perform numerical simulations, which handle General Relativistic (GR), Radiative (R), and

MagnetoHydroDynamic In physics and engineering, magnetohydrodynamics (MHD; also called magneto-fluid dynamics or hydromagnetics) is a model of electrically conducting fluids that treats all interpenetrating particle species together as a single continu ...

(MHD)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Narayan, Ramesh Indian astrophysicists 20th-century Indian astronomers Harvard University faculty Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics people 21st-century American astronomers 1950 births Living people