Hanumant Shankar Sawant
Hanumant Shankar Sawant was a radio astronomer and one of the pioneers of the Brazilian solar radio astronomy. He was the key scientist behind the concept, design, and installation of the Brazilian Decimetric Array. Under his leadership, an outstanding group in radio astrophysics was built at the National Institute for Space Research in Brazil.
Early life and education
Hanumant Sawant was born at Pune, India, in 1939. He received a BSc degree in Electronics and Communications Engineering from the University of Bombay in 1964, an MSc in Physics in 1971 from Ahmedabad University, and a PhD in Physical Sciences from the Physical Research Laboratory in 1977. He was at the Department of Astronomy of the University of Maryland and the Space Science Laboratory of the University of California, Berkeley, USA. In 1982, he became an Associate Researcher of the National Institute for Space Research in Brazil. He became Project Director of the BDA in 2002 and retired from INPE in 2015.Major contributions
His main contributions involved observational and theoretical precursor studies of fine structures in solar noise storms at decametric frequencies and high-energy solar flares, in collaboration with leading scientists such as R.V. Bhonsle, S.K. Alurkar, S.S. Degaonkar, M. Kundu, P. Kaufmann and S.R. Kane. In 1982, he participated in the innovative investigation on the interplanetary effects of solar flares that occurred in 1979; in 1984, he published the results in partnership with S.R. Kane and A. Hewish, the Nobel Prize winner in physics in 1974. This was pioneering work in the scientific field that is now known as space weather.He was the lead researcher for the development of several instruments in solar radio astronomy: ROI Millimeter Radiometer at the Itapetinga Radio Observatory, the Decimetric Solar Spectrometer, the Brazilian Solar Spectroscope, and the Brazilian Decimetric Array, for which he served as General Coordinator from 2001.