Thanu Padmanabhan

Thanu Padmanabhan (born 10 March 1957) is an Indian theoretical physicist and Cosmologist whose research spans a wide variety of topics in Gravitation, Structure formation in the universe and Quantum Gravity He has published more than 230 papers and reviews in international journals and ten books in these areas Many of his contributions, especially those related to the analysis and modelling of dark energy in the universe and the interpretation of gravity as an emergent phenomenon, have made significant impact in the field He is currently a distinguished professor at the InterUniversity Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics, (IUCAA) at Pune, India
Born in 1957, Padmanabhan did his schooling in Thiruvananthapuram and earned his BSc (1977) and MSc (1979) in Physics, securing Gold Medals in both for graduating at the top of his class, from the University College, Kerala University He published his first research paper (on general relativity) when he was still a BSc student, at the age of 20 He joined the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai in 1979 for his PhD and became a faculty member there in 1980 He held various faculty positions at TIFR during 19801992 and also spent a year (in 198687) at the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge He moved to IUCAA in 1992 and took over as its Dean, Core Academic Programmes, in 1997, which is the position he is currently holding Padmanabhan has also served as Adjunct Faculty of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (Mumbai), the HarishChandra Research Institute (Allahabad), the Raman Research Institute (Bangalore) and the Indian Institute of Science, Education and Research (IISER, Pune) at different periods in his career He is the elected President of the Cosmology Commission (20092012) of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) and Chairman of the Astrophysics Commission (20112014) of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) He has also been a Visiting Faculty at many institutes including the California Institute of Technology, Princeton University, and a Sackler Distinguished Astronomer of the Institute of Astronomy, CambridgeHe is married to Dr Vasanthi Padmanabhan, who has a PhD in astrophysics from TIFR, Mumbai and has one daughter, Hamsa Padmanabhan