Former IUCAA director Prof Naresh Dadhich passes away in Beijing

Eminent astronomer and former director of IUCAA Prof Naresh Dadhich passed away in Beijing, China, following a heart attack

Pune: Eminent astronomer and former director of the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), Prof Naresh Dadhich, passed away in Beijing, China, following a heart attack. He was 81 years old.

Eminent astronomer and former director of IUCAA Prof Naresh Dadhich passed away in Beijing, China, following a heart attack. (HT)

Prof Dadhich had travelled to Beijing to attend an academic conference and was engaged in collaborative research there for about a month. Over the past couple of days, he had been feeling slightly unwell. According to sources from IUCAA, he was reportedly stable this morning, but his condition suddenly deteriorated, and he passed away in the afternoon (local time). Efforts are currently underway to bring his mortal remains back to India.

Born on September 1, 1944, Prof Dadhich was a theoretical physicist known for his pioneering work in relativistic astrophysics and quantum gravity. He served as the Director of IUCAA in Pune from July 2003 and later joined Jamia Millia Islamia University, New Delhi, where he held the MA Ansari Chair in Theoretical Physics at the Centre for Theoretical Physics from 2012 to 2016.

Throughout his distinguished career, Prof Dadhich made significant contributions to gravitational physics. In 2012, he was a visiting professor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa, and had also collaborated with gravity research groups at the University of Portsmouth (UK) and Bilbao (Spain).

A prolific researcher, Prof Dadhich published over 100 scientific papers in collaboration with scholars across the globe.