Somak Raychaudhury

Somak Raychaudhury
Somak Raychaudhury at IUCAA September 2015
Born	Calcutta (now Kolkata), India
Nationality	Indian
Fields	Astrophysics, Cosmology
Institutions	Presidency University, Kolkata, University of Birmingham
Alma mater	University of Cambridge Churchill College, Cambridge University of Oxford Trinity College, Oxford Presidency College, Calcutta University of Calcutta
Doctoral advisor	Donald Lynden-Bell

Somak Raychaudhury (Bengali: সোমক রায়চৌধুরী) is an Indian astrophysicist. He is the Director of the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), Pune. He is on leave from Presidency University, Kolkata, India, where he is a Professor of Physics, and is also affiliated to the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom. He is known for his work on stellar mass black holes and supermassive black holes. His significant contributions include those in the fields of gravitational lensing, galaxy dynamics and large-scale motions in the Universe, including the Great Attractor.

Somak Raychaudhury was born in Kolkata (then Calcutta), India. He attended St Xavier's Collegiate School, Kolkata, from which he ranked second in the Madhyamik examination of the West Bengal Board of Secondary Education, 1978. He then studied at St Xavier's College, Kolkata, from which he placed second in the state in the Higher Secondary Examination of the West Bengal Council of Higher Secondary Education. He attended Presidency College, Calcutta, where he completed his BSc degree in Physics in 1983. He then went to complete a BA degree in Physics at Trinity College, Oxford, University of Oxford, supported by an Inlaks Scholarship from the Inlaks Shivdasani Foundation, where he won a Douglas Sladen Essay prize. He then proceeded to obtain a PhD in Astrophysics from the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom, as a member of Churchill College, Cambridge, in 1990, supported by an Isaac Newton Studentship. Here, he was a recipient of a Smith's Prize (J.T. Knight Prize) in 1988. The subject of his doctoral thesis, supervised by Donald Lynden-Bell, FRS, was "Gravity, Galaxies and the 'Great Attractor' Survey".