Shrinivas Kulkarni

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Shrinivas R. Kulkarni
Shrinivas Kulkarni 2016 portrait crop.jpg
Kulkarni in 2016
Born (1956-10-04) 4 October 1956 (age 67)
Kurundwad, Maharashtra, India
Alma mater
Awards
  • FRS [1] (2001)
  • US NAS (2003)
  • Indian Academy of Sciences (2012)
  • Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (2016)
  • Helen B. Warner Prize (1991)
  • NSF Waterman Prize (1992)
  • Jansky prize (2002)
  • Dan David Prize (2017)
Scientific career
Fields Astronomy
  • Interstellar Medium
  • Pulsars
  • Millisecond Pulsars,
  • Brown Dwarf
  • Soft Gamma-ray Repeaters
  • Gamma-ray Bursts
  • Optical Transients
Institutions California Institute of Technology
Doctoral advisor

Shrinivas Ramchandra Kulkarni (born 4 October 1956) is a US-based astronomer born and raised in India. [2] He is currently a professor of astronomy and planetary science at California Institute of Technology, [3] and he served as director of Caltech Optical Observatory (COO) at California Institute of Technology, in which capacity he oversaw the Palomar and Keck among other telescopes. [3] He is the recipient of a number of awards and honours.

Contents

Early life and education

Shrinivas Ramchandra Kulkarni was born on 4 October 1956 in the small town of Kurundwad in Maharashtra, into a Hindu family. His father, Dr. R. H. Kulkarni, was a surgeon based in Hubballi and his mother, Vimala Kulkarni, was a home-maker. He is one of four children and has three sisters, Sunanda Kulkarni, Sudha Murthy (educator, author, philanthropist and wife of one of the co-founders of Infosys and Jaishree Deshpande (wife of Gururaj Deshpande). [4] [5] [6]

Kulkarni and his sisters grew up in Hubballi, Karnataka, and received their schooling at local schools there. [2] [4] [7] [5] He obtained his MS in applied physics from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi in 1978 and his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley in 1983. [3]

Career

In 1987, Kulkarni obtained a position as faculty at the California Institute of Technology. [3] According to his website, he has mentored 64 young scholars by the end of 2016.

Kulkarni is known for making key discoveries that open new sub-fields within astronomy, using wide range of wavelength in observation. ADS shows that his papers cover following fields: (1) HI absorption studies of Milky Way Galaxy, (2) pulsars, millisecond pulsars, and globular cluster pulsars, (3) brown dwarfs and other sub-stellar objects, (4) soft gamma-ray repeaters, (5) gamma-ray bursts, and (6) optical transients. He made significant contributions in these sub-fields of astronomy.

Key discoveries

Kulkarni started off his career as a radio astronomer. He studied Milky Way Galaxy using HI absorption under the guidance of his advisor Carl Heiles, and observed its four arms. [8] The review articles he wrote with Carl Heiles have been highly cited in the field of interstellar medium. [9] [10]

He discovered the first millisecond pulsar called PSR B1937+21 [11] with Donald Backer and colleagues, while he was a graduate student. In 1986, he found the first optical counterpart of binary pulsars, [12] while he was a Millikan Fellow at California Institute of Technology. He was instrumental in discovery of the first globular cluster pulsar in 1987 [13] using a supercomputer.

With Dale Frail at NRAO and Toshio Murakami and his colleagues at ISAS (predecessor of JAXA that was led by Yasuo Tanaka at that time) Kulkarni showed that soft gamma-ray repeaters are neutron stars associated with supernova remnants. [14] [15] This discovery eventually led to the understanding that neutron stars with extremely high magnetic field called magnetars are the soft gamma-ray repeaters. [16]

Caltech-NRAO team which he led showed in 1997 that gamma-ray bursts came from extra-galactic sources, [17] and identified optical counterparts. [18] Their research initiated the detailed studies of the sources of gamma-ray bursts along with the European team led by Jan van Paradijs.

He was also a member of the Caltech team that observed the first irrefutable brown dwarf in 1994 that orbited around a star called Gliese 229. [19]

His recent work involved Palomar Transient Factory which has succeeded in identifying the new groups of optical transients such as superluminous supernovae, [20] calcium-rich supernovae, [21] and luminous red novae. [22] [23]

The success of his astronomical research is evident by 63 Nature Letters, 7 Science Letters, and total of 479 refereed scientific articles that bear his name by the end of 2015, according to ADS. Recognizing his contribution to astronomy, he was awarded the Dan David Prize in 2017. [24]

Awards and honours

Kulkarni has received many awards and honours, including the NSF's Alan T. Waterman Award in 1992, [25] the Helen B. Warner Prize from the American Astronomical Society in 1991, [26] the Jansky Prize in 2002 [27] and the Dan David Prize in 2017. [28] [29] In 2015, he received an honorary doctorate from Radboud University in the Netherlands. [30]

Services to the field

Kulkarni has been the Jury Chair for the Infosys Prize for the discipline of Physical Sciences since 2009. [31] The prize is awarded by the Infosys Foundation, whose founder is Kulkarni's brother-in-law, Narayana Murthy.

Kulkarni is a member of as many as four national academies around the globe. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, London, in 2001, [1] [32] a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences in 2003, [33] an honorary fellow of Indian Academy of Sciences in 2012, [34] and a foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences on 12 September 2016. [35] [36]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Neutron star</span> Collapsed core of a massive star

A neutron star is the collapsed core of a massive supergiant star, which had a total mass of between 10 and 25 solar masses (M☉), possibly more if the star was especially metal-rich. Except for black holes, neutron stars are the smallest and densest known class of stellar objects. Neutron stars have a radius on the order of 10 kilometers (6 mi) and a mass of about 1.4 M☉. They result from the supernova explosion of a massive star, combined with gravitational collapse, that compresses the core past white dwarf star density to that of atomic nuclei.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Magnetar</span> Type of neutron star with a strong magnetic field

A magnetar is a type of neutron star with an extremely powerful magnetic field (~109 to 1011 T, ~1013 to 1015 G). The magnetic-field decay powers the emission of high-energy electromagnetic radiation, particularly X-rays and gamma rays.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vulpecula</span> Constellation in the northern celestial hemisphere

Vulpecula is a faint constellation in the northern sky. Its name is Latin for "little fox", although it is commonly known simply as the fox. It was identified in the seventeenth century, and is located in the middle of the Summer Triangle.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pulsar</span> Highly magnetized, rapidly rotating neutron star

A pulsar is a highly magnetized rotating neutron star that emits beams of electromagnetic radiation out of its magnetic poles. This radiation can be observed only when a beam of emission is pointing toward Earth, and is responsible for the pulsed appearance of emission. Neutron stars are very dense and have short, regular rotational periods. This produces a very precise interval between pulses that ranges from milliseconds to seconds for an individual pulsar. Pulsars are one of the candidates for the source of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Crab Pulsar</span> Pulsar in the constellation Taurus

The Crab Pulsar is a relatively young neutron star. The star is the central star in the Crab Nebula, a remnant of the supernova SN 1054, which was widely observed on Earth in the year 1054. Discovered in 1968, the pulsar was the first to be connected with a supernova remnant.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Geminga</span> X-ray pulsar in the constellation Gemini

Geminga is a gamma ray and x-ray pulsar source thought to be a neutron star approximately 250 parsecs from the Sun in the constellation Gemini.

Dale A. Frail is a Canadian astronomer working at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) in Socorro, New Mexico.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vela Pulsar</span> Multi-spectrum pulsar in the constellation Vela

The Vela Pulsar is a radio, optical, X-ray- and gamma-emitting pulsar associated with the Vela Supernova Remnant in the constellation of Vela. Its parent Type II supernova exploded approximately 11,000–12,300 years ago.

LS I +61 303 is a microquasar, a binary system containing a massive star and a compact object. The compact object is a pulsar and the system is around 7,000 light-years away.

Carl Eugene Heiles is an American astrophysicist noted for his contribution to the understanding of diffuse interstellar matter through observational radio astronomy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GRB 970508</span> Gamma-ray burst detected on May 8, 1997

GRB 970508 was a gamma-ray burst (GRB) detected on May 8, 1997, at 21:42 UTC; it is historically important as the second GRB with a detected afterglow at other wavelengths, the first to have a direct redshift measurement of the afterglow, and the first to be detected at radio wavelengths.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">PSR B1937+21</span> Pulsar in the constellation Vulpecula

PSR B1937+21 is a pulsar located in the constellation Vulpecula a few degrees in the sky away from the first discovered pulsar, PSR B1919+21. The name PSR B1937+21 is derived from the word "pulsar" and the declination and right ascension at which it is located, with the "B" indicating that the coordinates are for the 1950.0 epoch. PSR B1937+21 was discovered in 1982 by Don Backer, Shri Kulkarni, Carl Heiles, Michael Davis, and Miller Goss.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Donald C. Backer</span> American astrophysicist

Donald Charles Backer was an American astrophysicist who primarily worked in radio astronomy. Backer made important contributions to the understanding and study of pulsars, black holes, and the epoch of reionization.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Black Widow Pulsar</span> Pulsar in the constellation Sagitta

The Black Widow Pulsar is an eclipsing binary millisecond pulsar in the Milky Way. Discovered in 1988, it is located roughly 6,500 light-years away from Earth. It orbits with a brown dwarf or Super-Jupiter companion with a period of 9.2 hours with an eclipse duration of approximately 20 minutes. When it was discovered, it was the first such pulsar known. The prevailing theoretical explanation for the system implied that the companion is being destroyed by the strong powerful outflows, or winds, of high-energy particles caused by the neutron star; thus, the sobriquet black widow was applied to the object. Subsequent to this, other objects with similar features have been discovered, and the name has been applied to the class of millisecond pulsars with an ablating companion, as of February 2023 around 41 black widows are known to exist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Neutron star merger</span> Type of stellar collision

A neutron star merger is the stellar collision of neutron stars.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Time-domain astronomy</span> Study of how astronomical objects change with time

Time-domain astronomy is the study of how astronomical objects change with time. Though the study may be said to begin with Galileo's Letters on Sunspots, the term now refers especially to variable objects beyond the Solar System. Changes over time may be due to movements or changes in the object itself. Common targets included are supernovae, pulsating stars, novas, flare stars, blazars and active galactic nuclei. Visible light time domain studies include OGLE, HAT-South, PanSTARRS, SkyMapper, ASAS, WASP, CRTS, and in a near future the LSST at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hakkı Ögelman</span> Turkish astrophysicist (1940–2011)

Hakkı Boran Ögelman was a Turkish physicist and astrophysicist. He was an expert on gamma ray astronomy, the physics of neutron stars, and solar energy and worked on several key topics in modern astrophysics. He made many contributions to high energy astrophysics. In his early professional career he engaged in the SAS-II Small Gamma Ray Astronomy Satellite experiment development, data analysis, and first detection and imaging of our universe in gamma rays with his NASA colleagues, as well as in other fields of physics. His main interests in the field of astrophysics were the study of gamma ray astronomy and compact objects such as neutron stars and pulsars. Ögelman worked at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Middle East Technical University (METU) in Ankara, Turkey, Çukurova University in Adana, Turkey, Max Planck Institute (MPI) at Garching, Germany and the University of Wisconsin.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fiona A. Harrison</span> American astrophysicist

Fiona A. Harrison is the Kent and Joyce Kresa Leadership Chair of the Division of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy at Caltech, Harold A. Rosen Professor of Physics at Caltech and the Principal Investigator for NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) mission. She won the Hans A. Bethe Prize in 2020 for her work on NuSTAR.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Galactic Center GeV excess</span> Unexplained gamma rays from the galactic center

The Galactic Center GeV Excess (GCE) is an unexpected surplus of gamma-ray radiation in the center of the Milky Way galaxy. This spherical source of radiation was first detected in 2009 by the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope and is unexplained by direct observation. Two percent of the gamma ray radiation in a 30° radius circle around the galactic center is attributed to the GCE. As of 2020, this excessive gamma-ray radiation is not well understood by astronomers.

References

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  2. 1 2 Kembhavi, Ajit (2001). "An accomplished observer". Frontline.
  3. 1 2 3 4 "Shrinivas R. (Shri) Kulkarni". Caltech Geology and Planetary Science. Archived from the original on 17 May 2017. Retrieved 29 March 2017.
  4. 1 2 "Karnataka Online Teachers Data Base". Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences Karnataka. 2012.
  5. 1 2 Kamala Bhatt (15 July 2002). "What Went Wrong?".
  6. ↑ "Two daughters who made India proud". www.leadcampus.org. 9 March 2017. Retrieved 29 March 2017.
  7. ↑ "A star called Kulkarni". rediff.com. 19 August 2003.
  8. ↑ Kulkarni, Shrinivas R. (1983). Studies of galactica HI in 21-centimeter absorption (PhD Thesis: UC Berkeley). Berkeley, California. Bibcode:1984PhDT.........4K.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  9. ↑ Kulkarni, Shrinivas R.; Heiles, Carl (1988). Verschuur, G. L.; Kellerman, K.I. (eds.). Neutral hydrogen and the diffuse interstellar medium. in Galactic and Extragalactic Radio Astronomy. New York: Springer-Verlag. pp. 95–153. Bibcode:1988gera.book...95K.
  10. ↑ Kulkarni, Shrinivas R.; Heiles, Carl (1987). "The Atomic Component". The atomic component. in Interstellar Processes; Proceedings of the Symposium, Grand Teton National Park, WY, July 1-7,1986. Astrophysics and Space Science Library. Vol. 134. Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Co. pp. 87–122. Bibcode:1987ASSL..134...87K. doi:10.1007/978-94-009-3861-8_5. ISBN   978-90-277-2485-4.
  11. ↑ Backer, D. C.; Kulkarni, S. R.; Heiles, C.; Davis, M. M.; Goss, W. M. (1982), "A millisecond pulsar", Nature, 300 (5893): 615–618, Bibcode:1982Natur.300..615B, doi:10.1038/300615a0, S2CID   4247734
  12. ↑ Kulkarni, S. R. (1986), "Optical Identification of Binary Pulsars - Implication for Magnetic Field Decay in Neutron Stars" (PDF), Astrophysical Journal, 306: L85, Bibcode:1986ApJ...306L..85K, doi:10.1086/184711
  13. ↑ Lyne, A. G.; Brinklow, A.; Middleditch, J.; Kulkarni, S. R.; Backer, D. C.; Clifton, T. R. (1987), "The Discovery of a Millisecond Pulsar in the Globular Cluster M28)", Nature, 328 (6129): 399–401, Bibcode:1987Natur.328..399L, doi:10.1038/328399a0, S2CID   4333586
  14. ↑ Kulkarni, S. R.; Frail, D. A. (1993), "Identification of a supernova remnant coincident with the soft gamma-ray repeater SGR 1806-20", Nature, 365 (6441): 33–35, Bibcode:1993Natur.365...33K, doi:10.1038/365033a0, S2CID   4357312
  15. ↑ Murakami, T.; Tanaka, Y.; Kulkarni, S. R.; et al. (1994), "X-ray dentification of a supernova the soft gamma-ray repeater 1806-20", Nature, 368 (6467): 127–129, Bibcode:1994Natur.368..127M, doi:10.1038/368127a0, S2CID   4350956
  16. ↑ Kulkarni, S. R.; Thompson, Christopher (1998), "Neutron Stars: A star powered by magnetism", Nature, 393 (6682): 215–216, Bibcode:1998Natur.393..215K, doi:10.1038/30357, S2CID   205000444
  17. ↑ Metzgar, M. R.; Djorgovski, S. G.; Kulkarni, S. R.; et al. (1997), "Spectral constraints on the redshift of the optical counterpart to the gamma-ray burst of 8 May 1997", Nature, 387 (6636): 878–880, Bibcode:1997Natur.387..878M, doi: 10.1038/43132
  18. ↑ Djorgovski, S. G.; Metzgar, M. R.; Kulkarni, S. R.; et al. (1997), "The optical counterpart to the gamma-ray burst GRB970508", Nature, 387 (6636): 876–878, Bibcode:1997Natur.387..876D, doi: 10.1038/43126
  19. ↑ Nakajima, T.; Oppenheimer, B. R.; Kulkarni, S. R.; Golimowski, D. A.; Matthews, K.; Durrance, S. (1995), "Discovery of a Cool Brown Dwarf", Nature, 378 (6556): 463–465, Bibcode:1995Natur.378..463N, doi:10.1038/378463a0, S2CID   4351772
  20. ↑ Quimby, R. M.; Kulkarni, S. R.; Kasliwal, M. M.; et al. (2011), "Hydrogen-poor super luminous stellar explosions", Nature, 474 (7352): 487–489, arXiv: 0910.0059 , Bibcode:2011Natur.474..487Q, doi:10.1038/nature10095, PMID   21654747, S2CID   4333823
  21. ↑ Kasliwal, M. M.; Kulkarni, S. R.; Arcavi, I.; et al. (2012), "Calcium-Rich Transients in the Remote Outskerts of Galaxies", Astrophysical Journal, 755 (2): 161, arXiv: 1111.6109 , Bibcode:2012ApJ...755..161K, doi:10.1088/0004-637X/755/2/161, S2CID   32808402
  22. ↑ Rau, A.; Kulkarni, S. R.; Ofek, E. O.; Yan, L. (2007), "Spitzer Observations of the New Luminous Red Nova M85 OT2006-1", Astrophysical Journal, 659 (2): 1536–1540, arXiv: astro-ph/0612161 , Bibcode:2007ApJ...659.1536R, doi:10.1086/512672, S2CID   8913778
  23. ↑ Kasliwal, M. M.; Kulkarni, S. R.; Arcavi, I.; et al. (2011), "PTF 10fqs: A Luminous Red Nova in the Spiral Galaxy Messier 99", Nature, 730 (2): 134, arXiv: 1111.6109 , Bibcode:2012ApJ...755..161K, doi:10.1088/0004-637X/755/2/161, S2CID   32808402
  24. ↑ "Indian scientist Shrinivas Kulkarni wins Dan David Prize". The Hindu. 18 May 2017. Retrieved 18 May 2017.
  25. ↑ "Alan T. Waterman Award Recipients, 1976 - present". American Astronomical Society. Archived from the original on 2 March 2015. Retrieved 29 November 2016.
  26. ↑ "Shrinivas Kulkarni received the 1991 Helen B. Warner Prize of the American Astronomical Society.", Physics Today, 44 (6): f129, 1991, Bibcode:1991PhT....44f.129., doi:10.1063/1.2810153
  27. ↑ "Jansky Lectureship". science.nrao.edu. 24 August 2016.
  28. ↑ "Caltech Astronomer Receives 2017 Dan David Prize". www.caltech.edu. 10 February 2017.
  29. ↑ "Laureates 2017". www.dandavidprize.org. Retrieved 27 March 2017.
  30. ↑ "Honorary Doctorate for astronomer Shrinivas Kulkarni" . Retrieved 2 June 2017.
  31. ↑ "Jury Chairs 2009". Infosys Science Foundation. Archived from the original on 28 March 2017. Retrieved 29 March 2017.
  32. ↑ "The Royal Society inducts Shrinivas Kulkarni". rediff.com. 2001.[ permanent dead link ]
  33. ↑ "Member Directory". National Academy of Science, US. Retrieved 25 March 2017.
  34. ↑ "Honorary Fellows". Indian Academy of Science. Retrieved 25 March 2017.
  35. ↑ "KNAW kiest zestien nieuwe leden" (in Dutch). Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved 25 March 2017.
  36. ↑ "Shrnivas Kulkarni". Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved 25 March 2017.
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