**Priyamvada Natarajan** discusses her new book, _Mapping the Heavens: The Radical Scientific Ideas That Reveal the Cosmos_, which describes the initial resistance to most of the major concepts of modern astronomy. In some cases, it was decades before radical ideas about the universe, such as black holes, dark matter, gravitational lensing were accepted. **Natarajan** also discusses her own cutting-edge research in these particular areas.
**Priyamvada Natarajan** is professor of astronomy and physics at Yale University and holds the Sophie and Tycho Brahe Professorship at the Dark Center, Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, and an honorary professorship at the University of Delhi, India. Her research and original contributions to the study of dark matter, dark energy, and black holes have won her many awards and honors, including the Guggenheim and Radcliffe Fellowships. Invested in public dissemination of science and numerical literacy, she is a member of the advisory board of NOVA ScienceNow, participates regularly in the World Science Festival, and writes for The New York Review of Books