India, Jan. 13 -- US-based astronomer Professor Shrinivas Kulkarni has been awarded the prestigious Gold Medal by the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) in London for his "field-defining" discoveries in time-domain astronomy. Maharashtra-born Kulkarni is the George Ellery Hale Professor of Astronomy and Planetary Science at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), where he has discovered a wide range of astronomical objects, including brown dwarfs and remote bursts of gamma rays.

His RAS Gold Medal citation from last week recognises his "sustained, innovative and ground-breaking contributions to multi-wavelength transient astrophysics". In receiving the highest honour from the historic organisation, awarded annually since 1824, he...