Abstract
With his seminal and pioneering work on the stability of the Schwarzschild black hole and its interaction with gravitational radiation, Vishu had opened a new window on black hole astrophysics. One of the interesting conjectures that soon followed in John Wheeler pronouncing “a black hole has no hair”; it is entirely specified by three parameters—mass, spin and charge—and nothing more. The discovery of gravitational waves in 2016 produced by the merger of two black holes and observed by the LIGO–VIRGO collaboration, carried the definitive signature of quasinormal modes, the phenomenon of black hole ringdown, exactly as predicted by Vishu in his 1970 Nature paper (see the introduction to Classics by R. Isaacson in this issue) 46 years ago. This was the crowning glory.
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Acknowledgement
It is a pleasure to thank Richard Isaacson for reading the article and making several suggestions for accuracy and style. We wish to warmly thank Saraswati Vishveshwara for the kind permission to use Vishu’s cartoons and figures.
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Naresh Dadhich is a general relativist interested in the physics and astrophysics of black holes and compact objects. He was associated with Prof. Jayant Narlikar in building up IUCAA right from its conception, succeeding him as Director in 2003 and retiring in 2009. Since then, he has been an Emeritus Professor.
Rajesh K. Nayak is a faculty member in the Department of Physical Sciences and CESSI at IISER-Kolkata. His primary research focuses on gravitational wave data analysis, the general theory of relativity, and relativistic astrophysics. He is a member of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration and the LISO-India Scientific Collaboration.
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Dadhich, N., Nayak, R.K. C. V. Vishveshwara (Vishu) on the Black Hole Trek. Reson 29, 11–27 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12045-024-1735-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12045-024-1735-4