S A Ananthakrishnan, 2024-04-30

Subramaniam Ananthakrishnan, born in 1944, is an Indian radio astronomer who was instrumental in the construction and operation of two of India’s largest Radio telescopes, the Ooty Radio Telescope (ORT) in 1970 and the Giant Metrewave Telescope (GMRT) from 1989 to 2000. He completed his BSc (Hons) from Presidency College (now known as Presidency University) and completed his BTech and MTech degrees from the Institute of Radio Physics and Electronics, Calcutta University. He joined the radio astronomy group started by Govind Swarup at TIFR for his PhD in 1967. He has worked in radio astronomy, studying various radio phenomena linked to the sun such as solar winds, extragalactic radio sources, cometary plasma tails, etc. He was the Observatory Director of the GMRT till 2004 and retired from TIFR in 2007.

Since 2007, he has served as Adjunct Professor in the Electronic Science department of Pune University (now called Savitribai Phule Pune University). He was a DAE-BRNS Raja Ramanna Fellow during 2007-2012 and held an INSA Senior Scientist fellowship from 2013-16. He has been involved in several space and telescope-related projects such as UVIT of ASTROSAT, ASTROSAT itself, DOT 3.6 m optical telescope, ST Radar project, 21 m MACE Gamma-ray telescope, and the National Large Solar Telescope, and Gauribidanur radio array. He is also the Chairman of the ISRO-Pune University Project Evaluation Committee for the past 7 years since 2011.

Ananthakrishnan was given the J C Bose Gold Medal in 1989 by the JBNSTS organisation and the prestigious INSA International Vainu Bappu Memorial Award 2010 for his outstanding contributions in setting up the large Ooty Radio Telescope and the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope and in making extensive observations of radio sources using the telescopes. He was given the Prof S K Joshi Memorial medal and award of the INSA in 2023 for his “outstanding contributions in any area of Physical Sciences”.