Priyamvada Natarajan

Priyamvada Natarajan, chair of Yale’s Astronomy Department, has been named the Joseph S. and Sophia S. Fruton professor of astronomy and professor of physics. 

Natarajan’s new title honors the legacy of Joseph S. Fruton and Sophia S. Simmonds, both biochemists who taught at Yale and were known for their contributions to research and education. Natarajan was notified of the appointment in May by University President Peter Salovey.

“I came into this country as an international undergrad; I was at MIT, and my family was in India,” Natarajan said. “I lived here as an international scholar, and of course I’m an American citizen, but this kind of thing really adds a sense of belonging. [The position] aligns with my values. For me, that was really important. Here are people who know me, who know and understand what I stand for. I stand for equality of opportunity and recognition for all genders in science.”

After graduating from MIT and completing her doctoral degree at the University of Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy, Natarajan came to Yale as an assistant professor in the physics and astronomy departments in 2000. Since then, Natarajan has been working on research in theoretical physics, specifically pertaining to black holes.

Black holes were often thought to form after the final stages in the life cycle of a star. However, the black hole seeds, or early black holes, that result from this process are often only a few times the mass of our solar system’s sun, and there is not enough time for these seeds to reach the size of known supermassive black holes, which can be tens of billions times larger than the mass of the sun, according to Natarajan. To explain this discrepancy, Natarajan and collaborators proposed a theory that these larger black holes result from extremely large black hole seeds that came into being without star formation.

“We have very clear-cut predictions out there for the James Webb Space Telescope, and we made these predictions well before the telescope was launched in 2017,” Natarajan said. “I’ve been working for nearly more than a decade on making those predictions. It was very challenging because computers were not fast enough and you just couldn’t simulate it all. So we had to wait for computers to become more sophisticated and for the instruments on a new facility like James Webb before it could be tested. That’s what I’m really excited about right now.” 

Natarajan is also one of the principal investigators working on the Harvard Black Hole Initiative. She also works on dark matter and maps it with gravitational lensing, which relates to the way that light bends in response to matter. Natarajan observes this light bending and uses the degree of distortion to ascertain details about the dark matter within a given galaxy. This kind of mapping can help scientists develop a better understanding of dark matter and in turn, the universe.

“It’s without question that professor Natarajan is one of the world’s foremost experts in studying massive black holes and dark matter,” said Michael Tremmel, a postdoctoral fellow at the Yale Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics. “Over her career, her work has pushed the field forward and, in many cases, opened up entirely new avenues of research which remain active today.”

Erica Nelson, an assistant professor of astrophysics at the University of Colorado, Boulder, who was mentored by Natarajan as a graduate student, agreed.

“It always felt like she had my back and was on my side,” Nelson said. “Grad school is a very vulnerable time in terms of your confidence and whether or not you feel like you deserve to be there, and she always gave me confidence and inspiration that I could do it and that I was doing a good job and that she respected my intelligence. She was always a very positive influence in my graduate career. I literally wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for her.”

Natarajan currently serves as the director of the Franke Program in Science and the Humanities at Yale.

Clarification, Sep. 12: This article has been updated to clarify that Natarajan’s work on dark matter is not solely related to the Harvard Black Hole Initiative.