Shrinivas Kulkarni

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Shrinivas Kulkarni

Shrinivas Ramchandra "Shri" Kulkarni (born October 4, 1956 in Kurundwad , Maharashtra ) is an Indian - American astronomer. He is McArthur Professor of Astronomy and Professor of Planetary Science at Caltech .

Life

He went to school in Hubballi , Karnataka and studied physics at the Indian Institute of Technology in New Delhi with a master's degree in physics in 1978. In 1983 he received his doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley . He was a Robert Millikan Fellow and from 1987 Assistant Professor of Astronomy and later Professor at Caltech. He has been Director of Caltech's Optical Observatories, including the Mount Palomar and Keck Observatories, since 2006. From 2004 he is director of the NASA Exoplanet Science Center.

Kulkarni is an observing astronomer who mainly observes compact objects (neutron stars, gamma ray bursts) and transient phenomena (such as exoplanets using interferometric and adaptive optical techniques) in a wide range of wavelengths. He started out as a radio astronomer, studying interstellar gas, discovering four arms of the Milky Way. In 1982 he was involved in the discovery of the first millisecond pulsar (PSR B1937 + 21), found the first optical images of pulsar binary systems and found the first pulsar in a globular cluster. Kulkarni showed that soft gamma ray repeaters are remnants of supernovae and he and colleagues consolidated the connection between gamma ray bursts and supernova remnants. In 1997 he and his team showed that gamma ray bursts come from outside our Milky Way and he was able to identify optical counterparts. He was part of the team that found the first brown dwarf (Gliese 229).

He is currently involved in the Palomar Transient Factory (PST), an automated wide-angle observation of the sky based on optically variable and transient sources on Mount Palomar (Oschin telescope and 1.5 m telescope) from 2009. He is also working on improving it further astronomical observation techniques.

In 2000/2001 he was visiting professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Harris Lecturer), in 1995 Miller visiting professor in Berkeley, in 1992 visiting scientist in Arecibo and in 1993 at ISAS in Japan. In 2003 he was a Salpeter Lecturer at Cornell University .

Since 2000 he has been involved in the planning of the Space Interferometry Mission, which was abandoned in 2010 (a satellite in particular for exploring planets around distant suns).

In 1992 he received the Alan T. Waterman Award from the National Science Foundation and in 1991 the Helen B. Warner Prize from the American Astronomical Society. He was a Packard Fellow, Sloan Research Fellow and received a Presidential Young Investigator Award in 1988. In 2002 he gave the Karl G. Jansky Lecture ( The brightest explosions in the universe ). He has been a member of the National Academy of Sciences since 2003 , the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1994 and a Fellow of the Royal Society since 2001 . In 2011 he became an honorary member of the Indian Academy of Sciences and in 2016 a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences . In 2017 an asteroid was named after him: (9804) Shrikulkarni . For 2017 he was also awarded the Dan David Prize .

His sister is the computer scientist Sudha Murthy . He is an American citizen.

Web links

Commons : Shrinivas Ramchandra Kulkarni  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Donald C. Backer , Shrinivas R. Kulkarni, Carl E. Heiles , Michael M. Davis and W. Miller Goss: A millisecond pulsar . In: Nature . Volume 300, 1982, pp. 615-618, doi: 10.1038 / 300615a0 .
  2. ^ Kulkarni Optical identification of binary pulsars: implications for magnetic field decay in neutron stars , Astroph. J., Volume 306, 1986, L 85
  3. ↑ Lyne et al. a. The discovery of a millisecond pulsar in the globular cluster M 28 , Nature, Volume 328, 1987, p. 399
  4. ↑ Kulkarni, D. Frail Identification of a supernova remnant coincident with the soft gamma-ray repeater SGR 1806-20 , Nature, Volume 365, 1993, p. 33
  5. ↑ Bloom et al. a. The unusual afterglow of GRB 980326: evidence for the gamma-ray burst / supernova connection , Nature, Volume 401, 1999, p. 453
  6. ↑ D. Frail, Kulkarni, R. Sari et al. a. Beaming in gamma-ray bursts: Evidence for a Standard Energy Reservoir , Astrophysical Journal, Volume 562, 2001, p. 55
  7. ↑ Metzger u. a. Spectral constraints on the redshift of the optical counterpart of the gamma ray burst of May 8, 1997 , Nature, Volume 387, 1997, p. 878
  8. ↑ Bloom et al. a. Identification of a host galaxy at redshift z = 3.42 for the gamma-ray burst of 14 December 1997 , Nature, Volume 393, 1998, p. 35
  9. ↑ Nakajima et al. a. Discovery of a cool brown dwarf , Nature, Volume 378, 1995, p. 463
  10. ↑ PST homepage
  11. ↑ Portrait of Sudha Murthy on the Karnataka website
personal data
SURNAME Kulkarni, Shrinivas
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kulkarni, Shrinivas Ramchandra (full name); Kulkarni, Shri
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Indian-American astronomer
DATE OF BIRTH 4th October 1956
PLACE OF BIRTH Kurundwad , Maharashtra