In 1916, by his theory of general relativity, Albert Einstein predicted gravitational waves that transport energy as gravitational radiation.
These were detected for the first time on September 14, 2015, announced by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) and the Virgo interferometer.
Three American physicists played a key role in the experiment and have recently won the Nobel prize in physics for the first observations of gravitational wave.
It was an Indian professor at IIT Gandhinagar, who led a team of scientists participating in the LIGO collaboration.
These scientists were part of the Indian Initiative in Gravitational-Wave Observations (IndIGO), which is an association of scientists from nine research institutes and universities in India.
His name was Anand Sengupta, who, for the past 13 years, has been working in the field of gravitational waves, astronomy and science, despite being told that it is a challenging field to pursue.
His passion for exploring the universe and general curiosity made him embark on the journey to search for these gravitational waves.
According to The Times of India, he wanted to know why it was so difficult to find them.
“Almost everything we know about the universe has been through detection of light at different wavelengths. As gravitational waves carry different kind of information than light, this discovery has thrown open a fundamentally new way of observing the universe,” he told TOI.
Formed in 2009, researchers at IndIGO wanted to promote gravitational wave research in India, with hopes of an advanced detector here.
Anand was the principal investigator of IndiGo and was active during its interaction with the LIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC). He put in his efforts with the group till 2014. This is how he earned a place in the historic discovery.
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