Yale astrophysicist Priyamvada Natarajan has been awarded the 2025 Dannie Heineman Prize for Astrophysics. She received the honor for her groundbreaking research on the invisible universe, particularly for her work in understanding the nature of dark matter and the formation of black holes.
The Heineman Prize, awarded jointly by the American Astronomical Society (AAS) and the American Institute of Physics (AIP), honors excellence in mid-career astrophysics research. Since its inception in 1980, Priyamvada Natarajan is the first individual from the Yale faculty to receive this prestigious award. Her contributions have been pivotal in developing innovative theoretical ideas and methods that allow direct comparison with observational data to address fundamental questions in theoretical astrophysics. I am extremely delighted that the AAS and AIP have chosen me," she said. I receive this award with great honor," said Priyamvada Natarajan, Professor of Astronomy and Physics and Chair of the Department of Astronomy at Yale's Arts and Sciences Faculty (FAS), Joseph S. and Sophia S. Fruton Professor.
priyamvada Natarajan was born in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, as the daughter of academician parents. She was one of their three children. Raised in Delhi, she received her primary education at R. K. Puram's Delhi Public School. She earned her degree in Physics and Mathematics from MIT. She completed her postgraduate studies at the Institute of Astronomy at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, where she was a member of Trinity College. During her time there, she was awarded a Title A Research Fellowship and held that position from 1997 to 2004. Before joining Yale University, she served as a Visiting Postdoctoral Fellow at the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics in Toronto, Canada.
In 2008, she was awarded the Emmeline Conland Bigelow Fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University, and in 2009, she received the Guggenheim Fellowship, along with several other awards, including the "Face of the Future" award. In addition to her current appointments at Yale and Harvard, she also holds the Sophie and Tycho Brahe Professorship at the Dark Cosmology Center at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark.
Priyamvada's research is based on the study of supermassive objects. It focuses on the formation, growth, and influence of black holes over time. She is engaged in continuous research on how black holes interact with their host galaxies and the broader universe."I am both happy and deeply honored that AAS and AIP have recognized my abilities," said Priyamvada Natarajan, Professor of Astronomy, Chair of the Department of Astronomy, and Professor of Physics at Yale University's Arts and Sciences Faculty (FAS), Joseph S. and Sophia S. Fruton Professor. "I have had the great fortune to be working at the forefront of astronomy and astrophysics research at this extraordinary time. It is a time when I can quickly test my theoretical and conceptual ideas against the abundant data available. "The gap between proposing ideas in the field of education and scientifically validating them has never been this short — I feel very fortunate to be a scientist engaged in research now," she said.
Priyamvada Natarajan is also the author of the book Mapping the Heavens: The Radical Scientific Ideas That Reveal the Cosmos.
