CV Vishveshwara, pioneer in black hole research work, passes away

Professor CV Vishveshwara who did pioneering work on black holes, passed away on 16 January 2017 in Bengaluru following a brief illness. He was 77. He is survived by wife and two daughters.

Popularly called Vishu, he was celebrated as the 'Black Hole Man of India'.

About CV Vishveshwara
• In the 1970s at the University of Maryland, he was among the first to study black holes even before they were named.
• His calculations gave a graphic form to the signals emitted by two merging black holes. This was the waveform detected in 2015 by the LIGO collaboration.
• This waveform also contained the quasi normal modes, a ringdown stage that sounds like a fading out ringing bell.
• In February 2016, he was invited to the synchronised announcement of the first discovery of gravitational waves at IUCAA.
• Vishveshwara also drew cartoons, many of which were published in physics conference proceedings. Spektrum der Wissenschaft, a German magazine, had published many of his cartoons depicting Einstein.
• He was also the founding director of the Jawaharlal Nehru Planetarium in Bengaluru.
• He had written several books including Einstein’s Enigma and Black Holes in My Bubble Bath.