From Fasting to Feasting: The Strange Feeding Habits of Black Holes

Event Date: 
August 14, 2013
Speaker: 
Priya Natarajan, Yale University

In this talk I will draw upon the wealth of current observational data from our own galactic backyard and beyond to offer new,tantalizing insights into how black holes, perhaps the most enigmatic objects in the universe, are born, feed and evolve.

Speaker Bio: 
Priya Natarajan is a professor in the departments of Astronomy and Physics at Yale University. She received her education at M.I.T. and the University of Cambridge, where she worked with Alan Guth and Martin Rees, and was the first woman in Astrophysics to be elected a fellow of Trinity College. She currently holds a Sophie and Tycho Brahe Visiting Professorship at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen and was elected honorary professor for life at the University of Delhi. Professor Natarajan started in astronomy as a young girl (back when Delhi still had dark skies). She owned a small telescope that she and her father would point at celestial objects. Her first research project involved tracking sunspots at the Nehru Planetarium in Delhi. Her recent research has involved cosmology, gravitational lensing, and the life histories of black holes. Recipient of many awards and prizes (including a Guggenheim and a Radcliffe Fellowship), she is passionate about the public dissemination of science and frequently writes op-ed pieces for the media.