Shrinivas Kulkarni

Kulkarni is the kind of scientist I quietly idolize. From a small town in Kolhapur to Berkeley and then a long reign at Caltech running Palomar and Keck, his path reads like a love letter to the night sky that never cooled off. The award shelf, from the Waterman to the Dan David Prize and a Royal Society fellowship, is staggering, but what moves me is the subject matter: transient and explosive phenomena, the universe at its most dramatic. He chose to chase the cosmos in real time. That blend of childhood wonder and relentless rigor is rare, and deeply admirable.

Shrinivas Ramchandra Kulkarni (born 4 October 1956) is an Indian American astronomer. He is a professor of astronomy and planetary science at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), and was the director of the Caltech Optical Observatory (COO), overseeing the Palomar and Keck among other telescopes.

Summary adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Name (English)

Shrinivas Kulkarni

Name (Japanese)

シュリニヴァス・クルカルニ

Reading

しゅりにゔぁす・くるかるに

Born

October 4, 1956 (age 69)

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Libra / Monkey

Origin

Kurundwad, Kolhapur district, India

Blood type

Private

Height

Private

Agency

Private

Occupation

physicist / astronomer / teacher

Elementary school

Private

Junior high

Private

High school

Private

University

University of California, Berkeley

Awards & achievements

• Fellow of the Royal Society
• 1991 Helen B. Warner Prize for Astronomy
• 2017 Dan David Prize
• 1992 Alan T. Waterman Award
• Infosys Prize
• 2018 Guggenheim Fellowship
• 1990 Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering

Spouse

Private

Children

Private

Parents

Private

Siblings

Private

Motto

Private

• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%B7%E3%83%A5%E3%83%AA%E3%83%8B%E3%83%B4%E3%82%A1%E3%82%B9%E3%83%BB%E3%82%AF%E3%83%AB%E3%82%AB%E3%83%AB%E3%83%8B

Tags

• Kolhapur district
• physicist
• astronomer
• teacher

Last updated

2026-06-02

Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public items are marked "Private / Unknown". English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.