Meenakshi Narain (May 9, 1964 – January 1, 2023) was an Indian-born American experimental physicist. She was a Professor of Physics and Chair of the Department of Physics at Brown University, and was also Chair of the Collaboration Board of U.S. institutions in the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) Collaboration. She contributed to the discovery of the top quark in 1995 and Higgs Boson in 2012.[2]
Early life and education
Born on May 9, 1964,[1] in Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh, India, Narain identified as an Asian-Indian American. In high school, she had to transfer to another all-girls school to study on the math track that led her to physics and statistics as an undergraduate. She had to overcome the family expectation to choose physics over law.[3] She completed a B.Sc. at Gorakhpur University and a M.Sc. at IIT Kanpur. Narain earned her Ph.D. at Stony Brook University with her dissertation titled, Inclusive Photon Spectra from Upsilon States,[4] under the supervision of Juliet Lee-Franzini.[5]
Narain was a frequent advocate for women in STEM fields,[15][16] and she also promoted science to the general public, in events such as the WaterFire Big Bang Science Fair in Providence, Rhode Island.[8]
^"Meenakshi Narain: A Physicist Working With Particle Accelerators and Helping Discover the Higgs Boson". INDIA New England News. May 25, 2018. Archived from the original on September 13, 2021. Retrieved September 13, 2021. Presently, Ms. Narain is co-leading the effort to establish the vision for opportunities at the collider in year 2023 and beyond. Narain is engaged in research and development towards the construction of the innermost part of detector using silicon sensors. Her research also deals with the analysis of large data sets and provides an excellent training ground for students in data science.
^ abKwon, Diana. "Big Bang Science Fair at WaterFire Providence". symmetry magazine. Retrieved September 13, 2021. My vision is to make people appreciate science in the same way they appreciate art and music," Narain says. "If we can make people feel that science is a fun thing to do, learn and converse about, I think that could be a way to change our society.
^Sundermier, Ali. "How to make a discovery". symmetry magazine. Retrieved September 13, 2021. Narain's groups analysis was essential to the collaboration's understanding of a signal that turned out to be the elusive top quark.
^Heilprin, John (July 3, 2012). "Physicists ready data on 'God particle' to explain everything". The Boston Globe. pp. A4. Retrieved July 18, 2022. Meenakshi Narain, a physics professor at Brown University who works on one of the teams, said that although she could not disclose what will be announced on Wednesday, this was a "once in a lifetime event," because the experiments have provided enough data to give "at least the first hints of it in a significant way," or to rule out the existence of Higgs.