Banibrata Mukhopadhyay

Banibrata Mukhopadhyay is an Indian Scientist/Astrophysicist and 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.

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 and predict the spin of black holes.^{[7][8][9][10]}

Early life and education

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, Krishna Kumar 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 in 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 in Rajabazar Science College, 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 Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics to do his Ph.D. research. However, Mukhopadhyay received his Ph.D. from S. N. Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences (registration with Jadavpur University) under the supervision of Sandip Chakrabarti.

Profession

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.  CS1 maint: Multiple names: authors list (link)
• Nath, S. K. ; Mukhopadhyay, B. ; (2016). "A pure hydrodynamic instability in shear flows and its application to astrophysical accretion disk". Astrophysical Journal.  CS1 maint: Multiple names: authors list (link)
• Dhang, P. ; Sharma, P.; Mukhopadhyay, B. ; (2016). "Spherical accretion: the influence of inner boundary and quasi-periodic oscillations". Monthly Notices of Royal Astronomical Society.  CS1 maint: Multiple names: authors list (link)
• 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.  CS1 maint: Multiple names: authors list (link)

Awards and recognition

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

• B. M. Birla Science Prize in Physics, 2012,^[18]
• Buti Foundation Award, 2011,^[19]
• Vainu Bappu Gold Medal, 2006,^[20]

Personal life

Mukhopadhyay loves singing like anything, mainly Indian ones including songs of Rabindranath Tagore. Personally, Mukhopadhyay believes that he may have more talent in music than physics. He has composed many songs, mostly written by his elder sister Labani. Some other compositions are based on the poetries by Sukanta Bhattacharya, Sanyendranath Dutta etc. In some cases, Mukhopadhyay himself has also written the lyrics. Mukhopadhyay used to be a dedicated cricketer in his earlier life when he served as a captain for his local team. Mukhopadhyay loved playing football (soccer) and his favourite position there used to be goalkeeper. Mukhopadhyay generally likes sports including sports like Lawn Tennis, Badminton etc.

References

Further reading

• . arXiv:1301.5965v1. Bibcode:2013PhRvL.110g1102D.  Missing or empty |title= (help)
• . arXiv:1608.00980. doi:10.3847/0004-637X/830/2/86.  Missing or empty |title= (help)
• . arXiv:1505.01281. Bibcode:2015ApJ...807...43M.  Missing or empty |title= (help)

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