91ÉçÇø

The , named for renowned mathematician and physicist , supports women in physics. Gupta, assistant professor of physics and astronomy, will spend three months this fall at the in Waterloo, Ontario, where she will continue her study of gravitational waves and binary black holes.

"I have visited the Perimeter Institute before, and it looks like you're in a different world," Gupta said. "There will be other researchers there and we can talk about our work and look for ways to collaborate.

"I've always wanted to have a distractionless place where I can focus on my research and nothing else, and this fellowship provides that."

During the fellowship, Gupta will have opportunities to interact with many of the top theorists in the world while researching in "a cathedral to science," said Leo Stein, associate professor of physics.

"Such fellowships are one of the few ways to recognize and highlight important and often unsung research contributions," Stein said. "We're not in science for any fame, but it's great to know that the broader physics community agrees: Professor Gupta is doing very important research."

Since joining the Ole Miss faculty in 2020, Gupta has contributed to numerous publications on , orbiting pairs of black holes caught in each other's gravitational pull, and , the ripples in space-time that black holes make when they collide.

Scientists first detected gravitational waves on Sept. 14, 2015, 100 years after Albert Einstein first predicted them in his 1915 general theory of relativity. The research team included several Ole Miss faculty members and graduate students.

"I was so proud to be a part of that discovery, because I was a fresh postdoc at the time," she said. "Now, we're going to celebrate the 10-year anniversary of that discovery this fall and we're still studying them. We're still learning."

During her stay at the Perimeter Institute, Gupta will research ways that extreme physics in black hole mergers and the resulting gravitational waves could test Einstein's theory of relativity.

"There are few things which Einstein's theory cannot explain, which made us believe that Einstein's theory is not perfect," she said. "So that's what we are trying to do; we are trying to test his theory using gravitational waves."

If physicists can show that space-time behaves in ways Einstein's theory doesn't predict, it could open the door to new physics. Coincidentally, Einstein also intervened on Noether's behalf in 1919, just four years after predicting the existence of gravitational waves.

"The namesake, Emmy Noether, is one of my heroes, and this is probably true for many physicists and mathematicians," Stein said. "She was likely the most important woman in the history of mathematics, revolutionizing the field of abstract algebra."

Noether, who completed foundational work in abstract algebra despite because she was a woman, , when Einstein and others insisted that the Prussian Ministry of Education should recognize the work she was doing.

Einstein later called Noether a "creative mathematical genius" who did not get the recognition she deserved in her lifetime.

Now, researchers such as Gupta can carry on Noether's legacy and push the boundaries of science through a fellowship that bears her name.

"Emmy Noether is one of the foundational inspirations for women in science and math," Gupta said. "I'm very much grateful for her and this fellowship, which is giving women around the world a chance to focus on their research without any distractions."

Top: Anuradha Gupta, an assistant professor of physics and astronomy, visits the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory in Livingston, Louisiana. The observatory features two 4-kilometer interferometer vacuum tubes to detect tiny disturbances in space-time. Gupta is among 15 recipients worldwide selected for the 2025 Simons Emmy Noether Fellowship. Submitted photo