Observations that support one of Priyamvada Natarajan’s theories about the formation of the universe’s earliest black holes were recently recognized as runners up for Science Magazine’s 2024 Breakthrough of the Year.
Natarajan, Joseph S. and Sophia S. Fruton Professor of Astronomy and Professor of Physics, has also been honored with a 2025 Suffrage Science Award from the MRC Laboratory of Medical Sciences in the UK for her pioneering contributions to astrophysics. She was celebrated at a ceremony held on March 7, International Women’s Day, at Oxford University.
From the seeds of discovery to Breakthrough of the Year
Recent images from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and X-ray telescope Chandra reveal that a model Natarajan developed more than a decade ago was prescient. She theorized then that the formation of “heavy” black hole seeds from the direct collapse of gas was feasible and could form in gas-rich satellite galaxies that lurked near their parent galaxies that had formed the universe’s first stars. A heavy seed that would form in such a satellite galaxy would then merge with the parent galaxy and result in a special class of object whose cosmic fingerprint would be detectable. In this object the emanating light would be dominated by matter being devoured by the rapidly growing heavy seed rather than the stars. The existence of this additional channel to make the first black holes via heavy seeds could also better explain the formation of supermassive black holes, which are now being observed much further back in time than scientists previously, thought thanks to the JWST.
Then, in 2017, Natarajan and her Yale research group published a study predicting the unique properties of supermassive black holes that could have originated from these heavy seeds that would be observable in the high-redshift universe, a feat that could be accomplished using JWST, which was still in development at that time.
Evidence for this theory is now being revealed by continuing observations from Chandra and JWST, which since 2022 has allowed astronomers to peer back in time to the incredibly young universe. Science Magazine named the JWST’s observations of the “cosmic dawn” as a runner-up for the 2024 Science Breakthrough of the Year—an award the telescope itself won in 2022.
A ‘special moment’ in science
In a recent plenary talk at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Natarajan spoke about how the JWST’s images of early galaxies and black holes have transformed our understanding of how these systems form. Alongside Julian Muñoz from the University of Texas at Austin who discussed the properties of the first galaxies being revealed by JWST, Natarajan discussed “the big open question of the origin of the relationship between first black holes and their host galaxies.”
“I am deeply grateful to the remarkable technical prowess of JWST, that has permitted probing the nature of the first black hole seeds and test our predictions. I feel extremely fortunate to be working in science at this very special moment when the gap between proposing a radical new idea and validating it has shrunk so dramatically.”
Natarajan was also recently named the 2025 winner of the prestigious Dannie Heineman Prize, which is awarded annually to a mid-career scholar who has demonstrated excellence in astrophysics research. Natarajan was awarded the prize, which comes with $10,000 purse, for her “groundbreaking contributions to our understanding of dark matter substructure in galaxy clusters, the formation and fueling of black holes, and their feedback into the surrounding environment.”