Banibrata Mukhopadhyay

Banibrata Mukhopadhyay is an Indian Scientist/Astrophysicist and a professor of Physics at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India, born at Kolkatta, India to Pulak Mukhopadhyay, a biologist, and Tapati Mukhopadhyay, an academician. Mukhopadhyay's mother tongue is Bengali.

Banibrata Mukhopadhyay
Born
Kolkatta, West Bengal
NationalityIndian
Scientific career
FieldsPhysics

Mukhopadhyay's work with his student Upasana Das has identified a mechanism to allow significantly super-Chandrasekhar white dwarfs to exist without collapsing into neutron stars, which could explain the origin of over-luminous type Ia supernovae.[1][2][3][4][5][6] He has also proposed a solution to the century-old problem of the origin of linear instability and subsequent turbulence and matter transport in Rayleigh-stable pure hydrodynamical shear flows, which could explain turbulence in accretion disks. His another work is able predict the spin of black holes.[7][8][9][10]

Profession

Mukhopadhyay finished primary schooling from Collins Institute and then studied at Mitra Institution (Main) where from he finished class X and class XII. Both the schools are in central Kolkata, where he grew up. Mukhopadhyay has stated that his school days were perhaps the most inspiring days, in particular in class X to class XII, when he became very close to his teacher Kumar Krishna Chowdhury and believes that his teacher, Kumar Krishna Chowdhury's affectionate training has made him what he is today. He also remembers that there were many other highly affectionate teachers in his school life as well.

Mukhopadhyay studied at the renowned Scottish Church College. One of the various reasons that Mukhopadhyay states for choosing to study in that college was that Swami Vivekananda and Netaji Subhas Bose had studied there. It was during the third year of college days that Mukhopadhyay started inclining to gravitational physics compared to other branches of physics. In this college, Mukhopadhyay found some inspiring teachers (including Asok Das). During this time only, he started getting influenced by his maternal uncle, a botanist, Arun Banerjee.

Mukhopadhyay did his postgraduation from the Rajabazar Science College of the University of Calcutta, when he started, and was determined, to take relativity, gravitational physics, astrophysics as a part of his research career. Here he found inspirational teachers including Amitava Raychaudhuri. Subsequently, Mukhopadhyay joined the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics to do his PhD research. However, Mukhopadhyay received his PhD from the S.N. Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences (registration with Jadavpur University) under the supervision of Sandip Chakrabarti.

Subsequently, after spending sometime in India and abroad (where he met and worked with Naresh Dadhich in IUCAA, Pune), Mukhopadhyay joined in Harvard University and worked with Ramesh Narayan, along with others. After that Mukhopadhyay decided to come back India and, since 2006, he is working at the Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, where currently he is an Associate Professor.

Research interests

Mukhopadhyay's research interests include black holes, white dwarfs and neutron stars (called as compact astrophysical objects),[11][12][13][14][15][16] in general, relativistic, high energy and nuclear astrophysics; astrophysical fluid dynamics and other related/similar fluid flows; Einstein's general relativity and its possible modifications and their applications to understand enigmatic astrophysical observations; and field theory in curved spacetime including baryogenesis.

His work on Fluid Dynamics was featured in the Indian Express newspaper.[17]

Selected bibliography
  • Singh Bhatia, T.; Mukhopadhyay, B. (2016). "Exploring nonnormality in magnetohydrodynamic rotating shear flows: application to astrophysical accretion disks". Physical Review Fluids. 1 (6): 063101. arXiv:1609.01841. Bibcode:2016PhRvF...1f3101S. doi:10.1103/PhysRevFluids.1.063101.
  • Nath, S. K.; Mukhopadhyay, B. (2016). "A pure hydrodynamic instability in shear flows and its application to astrophysical accretion disk". Astrophysical Journal. 830 (2): 86. arXiv:1608.00980. Bibcode:2016ApJ...830...86N. doi:10.3847/0004-637X/830/2/86.
  • Dhang, P.; Sharma, P.; Mukhopadhyay, B. (2016). "Spherical accretion: the influence of inner boundary and quasi-periodic oscillations". Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 461 (3): 2426. arXiv:1604.08214. Bibcode:2016MNRAS.461.2426D. doi:10.1093/mnras/stw1480.
  • Bhattacharya, D.; Sreekumar, P.; Mukhopadhyay, B.; Tomar, I. (2016). "Does black hole spin play a key role in the FSRQ/BL Lac dichotomy?". Research in Astronomy and Astrophysics.

Awards and recognition

In recognition of his work, Mukhopadhyay has received the following awards:

  • B. M. Birla Science Prize in Physics, 2012,[18]
  • Vainu Bappu Gold Medal, 2006,[19]

References
  1. "Fatter than laureate's limit- Indian astrophysicists revise sacrosanct number". The Telegraph. 19 February 2013. Retrieved 10 November 2016.
  2. "Extremely bright supernovae may break the Chandrasekhar limit". Physics World. 12 February 2013. Retrieved 10 November 2016.
  3. "New mass limit for white dwarfs". Nature India. 20 February 2013. Retrieved 10 November 2016.
  4. "Indian physicists crack puzzle of exploding stars". The Telegraph. 16 April 2015. Retrieved 10 November 2016.
  5. "New Mass Limit for White Dwarfs: Explains Super-Chandrasekhar Type Ia Supernovae". 2Physics. 16 April 2015. Retrieved 10 November 2016.
  6. "IISc scientist's paper explains the existence of super luminous supernova". The Times of India. 28 March 2013. Retrieved 10 November 2016.
  7. "Two Indian Institute of Science scientists crack mystery of black holes". The Times of India. 21 September 2013. Retrieved 21 November 2016.
  8. "And then came gravity waves". The Week. 28 March 2016. Retrieved 10 November 2016.
  9. "If a black hole spins, it is heavier". Nature India. 26 August 2013. Retrieved 10 November 2016.
  10. "Calcutta scholars shine light on black holes". Nature India. 26 August 2013. Retrieved 10 November 2016.
  11. "Fatter than laureate's limit- Indian astrophysicists revise sacrosanct number". The Telegraph. 19 February 2013. Retrieved 10 November 2016.
  12. "Extremely bright supernovae may break the Chandrasekhar limit". Physics World. 12 February 2013. Retrieved 10 November 2016.
  13. "New mass limit for white dwarfs". Nature India. 20 February 2013. Retrieved 10 November 2016.
  14. "Indian physicists crack puzzle of exploding stars". The Telegraph. 16 April 2015. Retrieved 10 November 2016.
  15. "New Mass Limit for White Dwarfs: Explains Super-Chandrasekhar Type Ia Supernovae". 2Physics. 16 April 2015. Retrieved 10 November 2016.
  16. "IISc scientist's paper explains the existence of super luminous supernova". The Times of India. 28 March 2013. Retrieved 10 November 2016.
  17. "From the lab: Decoding black holes via fluid dynamics". Nature India. 6 July 2016. Retrieved 10 November 2016.
  18. "B.M. Birla Science Prizes announced". The Hindu. 10 October 2013. Retrieved 10 November 2016.
  19. "ASI Awards". Archived from the original on 10 June 2015. Retrieved 10 November 2016.

Further reading
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