Ramesh Narayan
Born1950
Mumbai
CitizenshipAmerican
Known forTheoretical Astrophysics: accretion processes on black holes
Scientific career
InstitutionsHarvard University
Thesis (1979)

Ramesh Narayan (born in Mumbai, India, in 1950) is an Indian-American theoretical astrophysicist, currently the Thomas Dudley Cabot Professor of the Natural Sciences in the Department of Astronomy at Harvard University. Full member of the National Academy of Sciences,[1] Ramesh Narayan is widely known for his contributions on the theory of black hole accretion processes. Recently he is involved in the Event Horizon Telescope project,[2] which led in 2019 to the first image of the event horizon of a black hole.[3][4][5]

black hole event horizon EHT
The first image of the event horizon of a black hole, captured by the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration.

Education and career path

Ramesh Narayan received a B.Sc. in Physics from Madras University and a Ph.D. from Bangalore University in 1979.[1] After his studies, he spent several years as a postdoctoral researcher at the Raman Research Institute in Bangalore. Later on, he moved to the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in 1983, where he eventually became a senior research fellow. After a few years as a faculty member at the University of Arizona, he moved to Harvard University in 1991 as a professor, where he is currently the Thomas Dudley Cabot Professor of Natural Sciences at the Astronomy Department.[6] He also served on the Physical Sciences jury for the Infosys Prize from 2011 to 2014.[7]

Fellowships

Ramesh Narayan is currently a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences,[1] a fellow of the Royal Society of London, a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a fellow of the World Academy of Sciences.[6]

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 bursts,[8] accretion disks,[9] black holes,[10] gravitational lensing[11] and neutron stars.[12] He is well known for his works on numerical simulations on accretion flows around supermassive black holes and the possibility of forming jets, via the Blandford–Znajek process. He significantly improved GRRMHD codes to perform numerical simulations, which handle General Relativistic (GR), Radiative (R), Magneto (M) hydrodynamical (HD) physics.[13]

References

  1. ^ a b c "Ramesh Narayan". www.nasonline.org. Retrieved 2020-08-20.
  2. ^ "Ramesh Narayan". Institute for Advanced Study. Retrieved 2020-08-20.
  3. ^ "CfA Plays Central Role In Capturing Landmark Black Hole Image". www.cfa.harvard.edu/. 2019-04-09. Retrieved 2020-08-21.
  4. ^ "First-ever picture of a black hole unveiled". Science. 2019-04-10. Retrieved 2020-08-20.
  5. ^ "Focus on the First Event Horizon Telescope Results - The Astrophysical Journal Letters - IOPscience". iopscience.iop.org. Retrieved 2020-08-21.
  6. ^ a b "Ramesh Narayan". Simons Foundation. 2017-08-14. Retrieved 2020-08-21.
  7. ^ "Infosys Prize - Jury 2011". Infosys Science Foundation.
  8. ^ Sari, Re'em; Piran, Tsvi; Narayan, Ramesh (April 1998). "Spectra and Light Curves of Gamma-Ray Burst Afterglows". The Astrophysical Journal. 497 (1): L17–L20. arXiv:astro-ph/9712005. Bibcode:1998ApJ...497L..17S. doi:10.1086/311269. ISSN 0004-637X.
  9. ^ Narayan, Ramesh; Yi, Insu (June 1994). "Advection-dominated Accretion: A Self-similar Solution". The Astrophysical Journal. 428: L13. arXiv:astro-ph/9403052. Bibcode:1994ApJ...428L..13N. doi:10.1086/187381. ISSN 0004-637X. S2CID 8998323.
  10. ^ Collaboration, Event Horizon Telescope; Akiyama, Kazunori; Alberdi, Antxon; Alef, Walter; Asada, Keiichi; Azulay, Rebecca; Baczko, Anne-Kathrin; Ball, David; Baloković, Mislav; Barrett, John; Bintley, Dan (April 2019). "First M87 Event Horizon Telescope Results. I. The Shadow of the Supermassive Black Hole". The Astrophysical Journal. 875 (1): L1. arXiv:1906.11238. Bibcode:2019ApJ...875L...1E. doi:10.3847/2041-8213/ab0ec7. ISSN 0004-637X.
  11. ^ Blandford, R. D.; Narayan, R. (1992). "Cosmological applications of gravitational lensing". Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics. 30: 311–358. Bibcode:1992ARA&A..30..311B. doi:10.1146/annurev.astro.30.1.311. ISSN 0066-4146.
  12. ^ Narayan, Ramesh; Piran, Tsvi; Shemi, Amotz (September 1991). "Neutron Star and Black Hole Binaries in the Galaxy". The Astrophysical Journal. 379: L17. Bibcode:1991ApJ...379L..17N. doi:10.1086/186143. ISSN 0004-637X.
  13. ^ Curd, Brandon; Narayan, Ramesh (2019-02-01). "GRRMHD simulations of tidal disruption event accretion discs around supermassive black holes: jet formation, spectra, and detectability". Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 483 (1): 565–592. arXiv:1811.06971. Bibcode:2019MNRAS.483..565C. doi:10.1093/mnras/sty3134.
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