As the world looks on at the winners of the Nobel Prize 2020, celebrations and testimonials have begun to flood social media. Interested people are getting their fill of who these achievers are and which of their achievements warranted the coveted recognition.

Three such winners of the Nobel Prize 2020 are Roger Penrose, Reinhard Genzel & Andrea Ghez who won the award in the field of Physics. While celebrating the trio’s unparalleled scientific achievements in furthering the understanding of black holes is worth all the accolades, there is another significant personality who deserves a mention in this regard. 

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The outstanding efforts made by Indian physicist Amal Kumar Raychaudhuri deserves equal praise and recognition at this time given that it is the ‘Raychaudhuri Equation’ which perfectly demonstrates that singularities are an inevitable consequence of general relativity. This is said to be a pivotal component in the proofs of Penrose - Hawking singularity theorems. The same theorem which has now earned Penrose the Nobel primarily this year.

The Raychaudhuri Equation is believed to be indispensable to the theory of Black Hole formations. Reports also claim that even Stephen Hawking became an admirer of professor Raychaudhuri’s thesis titled  'Properties of Expanding Universe'.

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A 2005 Telegraph article had said, 

“The Raychaudhuri Equation hit the pinnacle of fame as it became the key tool in the hands of young relativists like Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose in the middle and late 1960s, in their proofs of rigorous mathematical theorems on the existence of spacetime singularities. The generality of these theorems inherits the generality of the Raychaudhuri equation which is used to fashion their demonstration.”

Now, even as we celebrate the Nobel Prize winners in Physics this year, our very own homegrown wonder and torchbearer lays forgotten. 

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