NASA Goddard Scientist Wins the Pierce Astronomy Awards
Contact:
Christopher Wanjek
wanjek@gsfc.nasa.gov
301-286-4453February 2, 2000
Washington, D.C. -- The American Astronomical Society has named Dr. Paul Nandra at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (Greenbelt, Md.) the winner of the 2000 Newton Lacy Pierce Prize for his work on black holes. The Pierce Prize is awarded annually for outstanding achievement in observational astronomical research over the previous five years to astronomers younger than 36 years.
Nandra, a Universities Space Research Association scientist working at Goddard, was nominated for the award for a series of seminal journal articles concerning the fate of iron atoms very close to supermassive black holes. In one 1999 article, Nandra documented what may be the first evidence of matter falling into a black hole, as opposed to the more readily observed phenomena of matter swirling around the black hole or shooting away.
"I am surprised and delighted to win the award," said Nandra. "It feels great to be recognized in this way, but many others here at NASA and elsewhere deserve a lot of the credit. I'm lucky to have had the opportunity to work with those people and make a contribution to such an exciting subject area."
Also among Nandra's accomplishments was a 1997 article stating that the X-ray light spectrum of iron in Active Galactic Nuclei (galaxies with bright cores) is commonly redshifted and broadened -- that is, stretched out compared to the normal dips and peaks of a light spectrum. This demonstrated that there is a black hole in the center of these galaxies, and that the radiation gets distorted in a specific way by the extreme gravitational field.
A popular target for Nandra's observations is galaxy NGC 3516, suspected to harbor a supermassive black hole. Much of Nandra's data come by way of the Advanced Satellite for Cosmology and Astrophysics (ASCA), a Japanese/U.S. X-ray satellite launched in 1993, and the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer, a NASA satellite launched in 1995.
Nandra graduated from Cambridge University in 1987 and received a Ph.D. in X-ray Astronomy from Leicester University, U.K. He has held several positions at Goddard's Laboratory for High Energy Astrophysics in Greenbelt, Md., since 1995. He will present the Pierce Prize lecture at the January 2001 meeting of the American Astronomical Society, to be held in San Diego, Calif.
Nandra lives in Adams-Morgan neighborhood in Washington, D.C. He is the son of Gurmit and Ann Nandra of Manchester, United Kingdom.
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