Vishveshwara Lectures
Through the public lecture series of "Vishveshwara Lectures", ICTS celebrates the life and work of C. V. Vishveshwara — a pioneer in black-hole physics and science outreach in India. Vishveshwara Lectures are given by leading scientists who also​ ​have ​contributed to communicating science to the layperson.
Past Lectures
Quantum Astrophysics
Roger Blandford (Stanford University)
18 January 2025, 17:00 to 18:30
St. Kuriakose Elias Auditorium, CHRIST (Deemed to be University) Bangalore
Although traditional astronomy was associated with visible light, it grew enormously in the twentieth century with the opening up of the electromagnetic and non-electromagnetic spectra. This happened in parallel with the development of quantum mechanics, which was employed by astrophysicists to...more
Gravitational-wave astronomy: New discoveries, puzzles & prospects
B.S. Sathyaprakash (Penn State & Cardiff University)
03 January 2024, 16:00 to 17:30
Chandrasekhar Auditorium, ICTS-TIFR, Bengaluru
Ever since their first discovery by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, compact binary coalescences of neutron stars and black holes have resolved several old enigmas, while raising new questions in gravity, astronomy and fundamental physics. They ultimately hold the secret to...more
Unraveling the nature of supermassive black holes
Priyamvada Natarajan (Yale University)
20 December 2019, 16:00 to 17:00
Chandrasekhar Auditorium, ICTS-TIFR, Bengaluru
Black Holes are the most enigmatic and elusive objects in the Universe. In this talk, I will show why supermassive black holes have such a strong hold on our imagination -- the history of the idea; their leap from a mathematical solution to real observationally-detected objects; their peculiar...more
Observing the Birth of the Universe
Lyman Page (James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor in Physics, Princeton University)
22 January 2019, 17:00 to 18:00
Chandrasekhar Auditorium, ICTS Campus, Bangalore
Light from the birth of the universe arrives at the solar system after travelling nearly unimpeded through space for 13.8 billion years. This light, called the cosmic microwave background (CMB), brings to us a picture of the primordial universe. Observational techniques have now advanced to the...more
Exploring the Universe with Gravitational Waves: From the Big Bang to Black Holes
Kip S Thorne (Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics at Caltech & 2017 Nobel Laureate in Physics )
11 January 2018, 16:00 to 18:00
ICTS Campus, Bangalore North
There are two types of waves that can propagate across the universe: Electromagnetic waves and gravitational waves. Galileo initiated electromagnetic astronomy 400 years ago by pointing a telescope at the sky and discovering the moons of Jupiter. LIGO recently initiated gravitational astronomy by...more