Alexia was invited to participate at the memorial by Prof. Nair at Cambridge along with many high profile Astrophysicists.
She knew professionally Prof. Nair as he had invited her as a panellist for Sir Roger Penrose’s discussion on Conformal Cyclic Cosmology and Lopez rings. The event was the “Silver Jubilee celebrations of the Centre of Philosophy and Foundations of Science in New Delhi” which was founded by Ranjit Nair. The event was live-streamed on YouTube and they discussed the intriguing and exciting new ideas of a potential link between Alexia’s recent large-scale structure discoveries of arcs and rings with Penrose’s Conformal Cyclic Cosmology.
A couple of weeks later, Ranjit’s wife emailed Alexia that he had passed away suddenly. She had told her that Ranjit had appreciated their discussion with Penrose and had been excited to follow my work.
Alexia commented: “Although I was but I blip in the life of Ranjit Nair, I was truly touched when his family invited me to be the discussant for the memorial lecture given by Lord Martin Rees.
We celebrated Ranjit Nair with an invigorating discussion on science, existentialism, aliens, AI and more, and finished with a beautiful remembrance given by his daughter Dr Vijayanka Nair.
A special thanks to Ranjit’s wife, Rukmini Nair, who extended so much kindness to me.”
Dr Alexia Lopez with former Astronomy Royal Sir Martin Rees at the memorial.