Kohei Inayoshi Awarded "Young Astronomer Prize of 2021"


Prof. Kohei Inayoshi at KIAA is awarded the "Young Astronomer Prize of 2021" from the Astronomical Society of Japan for his research on “theoretical studies for the formation and evolution of massive black holes”. This prestigious award is granted to 2-3 young researchers, whose research has significant accomplishments in astronomy.

Kohei Inayoshi

Inayoshi's research focuses on the formation of supermassive black holes in the early epoch of the universe and the coevolution nature between black holes and host galaxies. He established a comprehensive picture of massive seed formation and found a mechanism for rapid growth of black holes. The astrophysical phenomena he predicts make those seed black holes bright enough to be detected with the forthcoming James Webb Space Telescope observations. This will shed the light on the unresolved coevolutionary process between BHs and galaxies in the early universe.


The following three publications are highlighted in the award:

[1] The Assembly of the First Massive Black Holes, 

Inayoshi, Visbal, and Haiman (2020), ARA&A, 58, 27

[2] Hyper-Eddington accretion flows on to massive black holes, 

Inayoshi, Haiman, and Ostriker (2016), MNRAS, 459, 3738

[3] Gravitational wave background from Population III binary black holes consistent with cosmic reionization, 

Inayoshi, Kashiyama, Visbal, and Haiman (2016), MNRAS, 461, 2722


Before joining KIAA in 2018 fall, Dr. Inayoshi spent 4 years at Columbia University in US as a Junior Simons Fellow. He received his Ph.D. in physics from Kyoto University, Japan, in 2014.