Master of Gizmos: Indian American CalTech Professor Shrinivas R. Kulkarni Receives Shaw Prize in Astronomy
- He is awarded for his ground-breaking discoveries about millisecond pulsars, gamma-ray bursts, supernovae, and other variable or transient astronomical objects.
Shrinivas R. Kulkarni, George Ellery Hale Professor of Astronomy and Planetary Science at the California Institute of Technology, has been named recipient of this year’s Shaw Prize in Astronomy. The Indian American is awarded for his “ground-breaking discoveries about millisecond pulsars, gamma-ray bursts, supernovae, and other variable or transient astronomical objects,” the Shaw Prize Foundation said.
The award citation further states that Kulkarni’s “contributions to time-domain astronomy culminated in the conception, construction and leadership of the Palomar Transient Factory [PTF] and its successor, the Zwicky Transient Facility [ZTF], which have revolutionized our understanding of the time-variable optical sky.”
Instituted by the late Hong Kong philanthropist Run Run Shaw, the Shaw Prize consists of three annual awards in Astronomy, Life Science and Medicine, and Mathematical Sciences, each with a monetary award of $1.2 million.
In a press statement on the CalTech website, Kulkarni said he was “pleasantly surprised” to hear that he had won the Shaw astronomy prize. “My wife did not believe me at first having suffered many of my pranks in the past,” he said. “ZTF is possible because of a knowledgeable and dedicated crew at Palomar Observatory, the sophistication of the instrumentation program of the Caltech Optical Observatories, and finally, exceptional students and postdoctoral fellows at Caltech,” he said. “ZTF is only possible at Caltech, which values exceptionalism.”
Throughout his career, Kulkarni has made a wide variety of discoveries. In his recent Watson Lecture at Caltech titled “Illuminating the Dynamic Night Sky: Discoveries from the Zwicky Transient Facility,” he discussed his passion for “building instruments to explore uncharted areas in astronomy. He has built a total of 10 instruments in his career,” the CalTech press release said. “My motto has been to build a big enough gizmo and things will happen,” he said.
Some of his earlier discoveries include “the first millisecond pulsar, a rapidly rotating neutron star that emitted more than 600 precisely spaced pulses per second; and the first brown dwarf, or ‘failed’ star, uncovered in 1995 using a then-novel instrument at the Palomar Observatory’s 60-inch telescope,” CalTech said. In 1997, he and his colleagues were “the first to measure the distance to a gamma-ray burst—a brief intense burst of gamma rays from the cosmos—showing the energetic event originated far outside our galaxy, billions of light-years away.”
The brother of educator, author, and philanthropist Sudha Murthy, wife of Infosys co-founder N.R. Narayan Murthy, Kulkarni was born in Kurundwad in Maharashtra.
Working with a graduate student, he later developed the STARE2 (Survey for Transient Astronomical Radio Emission 2) instrument for studying fast-radio bursts, mysterious bursts of radio waves whose origins were unknown. “STARE2, which consisted of three bucket-sized radio antennae spread across the southwestern United States, caught a massive fast-radio burst in our own galaxy, and helped pinpoint its origins to a type of dead magnetic star called a magnetar,” CatTech said.
To capture the dynamic night sky—which includes exploding stars, asteroids, and more—Kulkarni developed the PTF camera and its successor, ZTF, funded by institutions around the world and two major grants from the National Science Foundation and the Heising-Simons Foundation. ZTF continues to operate from Caltech’s Palomar Observatory.
The brother of educator, author, and philanthropist Sudha Murthy, wife of Infosys co-founder N.R. Narayan Murthy, Kulkarni was born in Kurundwad in Maharashtra. He received his master’s degree from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi in 1978 and his PhD from UC Berkeley in 1983. He arrived at Caltech on a Millikan Fellowship in 1985 and joined the faculty in 1987, serving as an assistant professor of astronomy, associate professor, professor, professor of astronomy and planetary science, MacArthur Professor, and George Ellery Hale Professor of Astronomy and Planetary Science. He was also executive officer for astronomy and director of Caltech Optical Observatories.
He is a member of the Royal Society of London, the Indian Academy of Sciences, the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. He has received many awards, including the National Science Foundation’s Alan T. Waterman Award and the Dan David Prize. He authored or co-authored more than 60 papers in the journal Nature by the age of 60, one of his lifetime goals.