Quotes from Priyamvada Natarajan

Data suggest that central black holes might play an important role in adjusting how many stars form in the galaxies they inhabit. For one thing, the energy produced when matter falls into the black hole may heat up the surrounding gas at the center of the galaxy, thus preventing cooling and halting star formation.

It is my idea that the public needs to be better educated about the nature of scientific inquiry and how the scientific process works. I firmly believe that this is the only effective way forward to combat the widespread distrust in facts and science.

Finding the first seed black holes could help reveal how the relation between black holes and their host galaxies evolved over time.

Scientific knowledge is, by its nature, provisional. This is due to the fact that as time goes on, with the invention of better instruments, more data and better data hone our understanding further. Social, cultural, economic, and political context are relevant to our understanding of how science works.

Individuals reporting on their own experience with particular therapies would provide first-hand accounts that could be considered in the improvement of drug design.

My students may have dexterity with the equations they're required to know, but they lack the capacity to apply their knowledge to real-life problems. This critical shortcoming appears in high school and possibly in elementary grades - long before college.

In addition to a well-funded school system, we need to encourage and exploit innovative approaches for learning outside the classroom.

I am a professor of astronomy and physics at Yale University, where I teach an introductory class in cosmology. I see the deficiencies that first-year students show up with.

Mental discipline and tenacity in the face of obstacles are traits that have greatly helped me in both my personal and professional journey thus far. I am also very optimistic by nature and tend to focus on the positive and remain hopeful when faced with adversity.

I fell in love with the night sky when I first looked through a telescope as a young girl growing up in Delhi.

The deep fascination with the mysterious, and the impulse to seek and locate ourselves in the cosmic context, seems to be imprinted in our DNA and psyches.

Science is evidence-based and provides a continuing understanding of complex natural phenomena. Our understanding is constantly evolving and continually improving.

We scientists have an obsession with unification, a grand synthesis. And dark matter is an irritating missing piece.

The geometry, the content, and the fate of the universe are all intricately linked. If you know two, you can deduce the third.

Dark matter is one of the dominant constituents of the universe, which piled up in certain parts of the universe due to gravity, and in those regions, galaxies were formed. It is the unseen thing that holds the universe together.

The invisible and unseen has always fascinated us humans.

Research in basic sciences now requires resources that no one country can provide.

The precise effects of lensing depend on the mass of the lens, the structure of space-time, and the relative distance between us, the lens, and the distant object behind it. It's like a magnifying glass, where the image you get depends on the shape of the lens and how far you hold it from the object you're looking at.

Perhaps more than English or history, STEM subjects require an enormous amount of foundational learning before students can become competent.

As an astrophysicist, my research work involves mapping dark matter, the elusive substance that accounts for about a quarter of our universe.