Nissim Kanekar

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Nissim Kanekar (born 11 September 1973) is an Indian astrophysicist and cosmologist. He is a professor at the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics, part of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. Kanekar is known for studying how fundamental constants, such as the electron-proton mass ratio and the fine-structure constant, may have changed over the history of the universe. He is a member of the International Astronomical Union and a recipient of the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize in 2017 and the Infosys Prize in Physical Sciences in 2022.

Born in Mumbai, Maharashtra, Kanekar completed his BSc in physics at Ramnarain Ruia College, Mumbai University, in 1991, then earned an MSc in 1995 from Savitribai Phule Pune University and a PhD in 2000 from the same institution. His doctoral work was conducted at the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics (NCRA). He carried out postdoctoral research at NCRA (2000–01), Kapteyn Institute in Groningen (2002–04) on a NOVA fellowship, and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Socorro (2004–08) with Jansky and Max-Planck fellowships. He joined NCRA as a reader in 2009 and has been an associate professor since 2012.

Kanekar’s research includes establishing observational bounds on the possible evolution of the electron-proton mass ratio and investigating the variation of the fine-structure constant over cosmological time. He was part of a team that observed a pair of distant Milky Way–like galaxies in early 2017, a finding described in a published paper. His work has been widely published, and he has delivered lectures at various institutions.

Awards and honors include the URSI Young Scientist Award (2005, which he declined), the 2008 Vainu Bappu Gold Medal (with Niayesh Afshordi), the Ramanujan Fellowship (2009–2014), the Hari Om Prerit Vikram Sarabhai Award (2015, shared with Dibyendu Chakraborty), the Swarna Jayanthi Fellowship (2015), the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize (2017), and recognition as part of the Asian Scientist 100 in 2018 and 2023. In 2022 he received the Infosys Prize in Physical Sciences for his study of galaxies during the peak era of star formation. He has held fellowships with Max Planck, Jansky, and NOVA and has declined the Bolton and ASTRON fellowships. He is a member of the International Astronomical Union and has given numerous lectures around the world.