Priyamvada Natarajan / Courtesy photo

Growing up in an academic household filled with medals and books, Priyamvada Natarajan’s curiosity was inevitable. She would surround herself with questions – and, interestingly, would try to solve them also. Who knew that years later, one of those early questions would eventually lead her to challenge one of astronomy’s deepest assumptions: how the first black hole in the universe was formed?

“I grew up in Coimbatore but spent most of my life in Delhi. Beyond books, I loved figuring things out, like puzzles. Looking at my interests, my father bought me a Sinclair ZX Spectrum and a Commodore 64”, says Natarajan. Long before personal computers became common in India, she taught herself how to program and play around with them. But the real trailblazing moment came when she began a research project with then-renowned Indian astrophysicist, and educator, Dr. Nirupama Raghavan.

Natarajan was a part of the Amateur Astronomers' Club at the Nehru Planetarium, Delhi, which was then headed by Raghavan. “I wanted to contribute and do some calculations for her. Appreciating my enthusiasm, the first project she gave me was to draw a map of the night sky showing which celestial entities would be visible from Delhi. It was a very tough problem to solve. But, given my obsession with maps and my interest in research, I just cracked it.”

Raghavan, couldn’t believe that someone so young could solve such a difficult problem. Only after seeing the printout and code on the floppy disk did she believe it was Natarajan’s work. The next thing Raghavan asked was, “What if you were living in Boston and you wanted to see the night sky there?” Natarajan explained that by entering the latitude and longitude of any place on earth, the map would be drawn: “I have entered all the data for potential locations on the Earth.”

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This breakthrough gave Natarajan her first taste of research, and she never looked back. After earning a full scholarship to MIT, the aspiring scientist explored a wide range of subjects, even dived into areas beyond science, such as history and literature. Despite a strong attraction, she returned to Physics and earned a PhD from Cambridge, England. With a remarkably good run, a wonderful thesis advisor, and great mentors, she became the first woman to be elected a fellow of astrophysics at Trinity College, and paved the way to Yale. While Natarajan’s professional journey has included some amazing opportunities, she has also faced significant challenges along the way, making her achievements even more meaningful.

“It’s a very male-dominated field. A major struggle for me was adjusting to the culture, which was very combative and aggressive, even in scientific arguments. It was about challenging each other, being sceptical  of new ideas, and interrogating them before they're validated. The culture of that community was not quite attuned to my sensibilities.” However, the Yale professor observes a sea change now and feels happy to be instrumental in helping break down the barriers for the next generation.

On a personal front, the challenge for Natarajan was learning to define success on her own terms rather than conforming to others’ expectations. For her, success meant pursuing work that was truly original and creatively ambitious. She considers herself lucky to get a chance to do that. “I proposed a very radical idea, which, to be honest, was originally met with a lot of skepticism,” she quips.

She suggested an entirely unconventional physical process known as direct collapse, in which massive clouds of gas collapse can directly coalesce under gravity to form a black hole. But this challenged the conventional understanding that black holes are the end state of massive stars, formed after a star exhausts its fuel, explodes, and leaves behind a compact remnant.  Natarajan first introduced the idea in a series of papers published between 2005 and 2006 and continued refining the theory over the years. With the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope, in 2023, astronomers observed an object whose properties closely matched her predictions.

“It was a moment of great satisfaction for me.”

Recognized by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people of 2024, Natarajan, a woman of grit, stresses the importance of mastering the fundamentals. She feels that strong conceptual knowledge is a non-negotiable for those pursuing STEM or research. The other is viewing failure as part of the process and operating with the right mindset.

Discover more at New India Abroad.