Jayant Narlikar Age, Death, Wife, Children, Family, Biography

Bio/Wiki
Full Name	Jayant Vishnu Narlikar
Name Earned	Father of Indian Cosmology
Profession(s)	• Astrophysicist • Academician
Famous for	Quasi-steady State Cosmology and Hoyle-Narlikar Theory of Gravity
Physical Stats
Eye Colour	Black
Hair Colour	Salt & Pepper
Scientific Career
Field(s)	Physics, Astronomy, Writer
Institution(s)	• Cambridge University, England • Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai • Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA)
Award(s)	• 1960: Tyson Medal for Astronomy • 1962: Smith's Prize • 1965: Padma Bhushan • 1967: Adams Prize • 1981: Bhushan by FIE Foundation, Ichalkaranji • 1989: Atmaram Award by Central Hindi Directorate • 1990: Indira Gandhi Award of the Indian National Science Academy • 1996: Kalinga Prize by UNESCO • 2004: Padma Vibhushan • 2004: Prix Jules Janssen • 2010: Maharashtra Bhushan • 2014: Sahitya Akademi Award • Bhatnagar Award • M.P. Birla Award • Prix Jules Janssen of the Société astronomique de France (French Astronomical Society)
Personal Life
Date of Birth	19 July 1938 (Tuesday)
Birthplace	Kolhapur, Kolhapur State, British India (now Maharashtra, India)
Date of Death	20 May 2025
Place of Death	Pune, Maharashtra, India
Age (at the time of death)	86 Years
Death Cause	Natural Causes
Zodiac sign	Cancer
Nationality	Indian
Hometown	Banaras (now Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh), India
School	Central Hindu College (now Central Hindu Boys School), Varanasi
College/University	• Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh • Cambridge University, England
Educational Qualification(s)	• Bachelor of Science from Banaras Hindu University (1957) • Bachelor of Arts in Mathematical Tripos from Cambridge University (1959) • Doctor of Philosophy from Cambridge University (1963) • Master's degree in Astronomy and Astrophysics from King's College, Cambridge University (1964)
Religion	Hinduism
Social Media	Facebook
Relationships & More
Marital Status (at the time of death)	Widower
Marriage Date	Year, 1966
Family
Wife/Spouse	Mangala Narlikar (Indian mathematician; died 2023)
Children	Daughters- 3 • Geeta Jayant Narlikar (a biomedical researcher at the University of California, San Francisco) • Girija Narlikar (works in computer science) • Leelavati Narlikar (works in computer science)
Parents	Father- Vishnu Vasudev Narlikar (mathematician, theoretical physicist) Mother- Sumati Narlikar (a scholar of Sanskrit)
Siblings	Brother- Anant Vishnu Narlikar (scientist)
Other Relatives	Maternal Uncle- V. S. Huzurbazar (a statistician) Niece- Amrita Narlikar (a social sciences academic at Cambridge University

Some Lesser Known Facts About Jayant Narlikar

• His father was a mathematician and theoretical physicist who worked as a professor and was a head of the department at Banaras Hindu University in Varanasi.

• He grew up in Banaras, Uttar Pradesh. He learnt Marathi from his parents.
  

  Jayant Narlikar’s graduation in Cambridge with his parents (Sumati and Vishnu Vasudev) and brother Anant (extreme left)

• He was top math student during his studies at the Cambridge University.

• He was also associated with Fitzwilliam College and the Royal Astronomical Society in London.

• He was a bright student and a sportsperson. He liked playing badminton and tennis in his free time.

• During his Ph.D., he did theoretical cosmology research under a noted scientist named Fred Hoyle.

• He completed his Ph.D. in 1963.

• After that, he joined the King’s College in Cambridge, as a postdoctoral fellow.

• In 1972, Jayant Narlikar returned to India.

• Soon, he joined the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) in Mumbai as a professor.

• There, he he also joined theoretical astrophysics group as its head.
  

  Jayant Narlikar while working as a professor

• In the 1980s, he was invited on the television show Cosmos: A Personal Voyage by Carl Sagan as a guest speaker. The show aired on PBS.

• In 1981, he co-founded the World Cultural Council.

• In 1988, Jayant Narlikar was appointed as the director of the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA) in Pune.

• He used to play a set of tennis every morning at the IUCAA Pune campus.

• From 1994 to 1997, he served as the president of the cosmology commission of the International Astronomical Union.
  

  An old picture of Jayant Narlikar while addressing a conference

• Jayant Narlikar has studied Mach’s principle, quantum cosmology, and action-at-a-distance physics during his research days.

• He did not believed in the Big Bang theory and researched for other possible theories.

• After that, he, along with scientist Fred Hoyle, created the Hoyle-Narlikar theory of conformal gravity.
  

  Jayant Narlikar with Hoyles (Barbara and Fred) and the author

• The theory connected the general relativity with Mach’s principle.

• The theory also claims that the mass of a particle depends on all other masses in the universe, and changes with the time.

• However, many other scientists did not accept his theory.

• After that, Jayant Narlikar, along with with Chandra Wickramasinghe, worked on a high-altitude balloon experiment. The samples were taken from an altitude of 41 km.

• He is a fellow of the three National Science Academies of India and the Third World Academy of Sciences in India.

• In 2009, he served as a jury for the Infosys Prize in Physical Sciences.

• In January 2021, he organised the 94th Akhil Bharatiya Marathi Sahitya Sammelan in Nashik, Maharashtra.

• His science books, short stories, research papers, and novels, are published in English, Hindi, and Marathi.

• Some of his books include The Lighter Side of Gravity (1982), The Return of Vaman (1989), From Black Clouds to Black Holes (1996), An Introduction to Cosmology (2002), and A Different Approach to Cosmology: From a Static Universe through the Big Bang towards Reality (2005).

  

  The cover of the book An Introduction to Cosmology (2002)

• He writes science and maths school books in India as a head of the NCERT committee.

• Jayant Narlikar liked travelling to distant places in his free time.
  

  Jayant Narlikar (third from left) with his family at the Yosemite National Park in California