Sandip Chakrabarti

After a brief period at ICTP, Trieste, where Chakrabarti completed a few definitive work on the formation of shocks in transonic/advective flows around black holes, he joined Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, and S.N. Bose National Centre. Currently, he is the Director of Indian Centre for Space Physics,^[10] Kolkata, which he founded in 1999. He was at NASA Goddard Space Flight Centre (1994-1995) as a Senior Associate selected by National Research Council.

The main focus of Chakrabarti's research is the hydrodynamic and radiative properties of astrophysical flows around black holes and other compact objects. He showed that the accreting matter must be transonic^[11] and should have standing, oscillating and propagating shocks. He and his collaborators studied many aspects of these flows and showed that the black hole accretion must have non-Keplerian component which plays a major role in deciding the observational properties. He wrote the first monograph on "Theory of Transonic Astrophysical Flows"^[12] (World Scientific Pub. Co., Singapore; 1990). He has completed over 650 research articles and written or edited several books and conference volumes.^[13] Fifty Nine students have completed Ph.D. Thesis under his supervision.^[13]

Chakrabarti was the first scientist to suggest that Gamma-ray bursts are the birth cry of black holes at his presentation in 1995, third Huntsville, Alabama Conference.^[14] In 2013, Scientists observed a conclusive evidence of this birth cry.^[15] He is also the first to suggest (1992-1996) that the accretion disks in an extreme mass ratio binaries could change the gravitational wave signals.^[16]