Barry Barish
Barry Barish is the Linde Professor of Physics, Emeritus at California Institute of Technology. He is a leading expert on gravitational waves, having led the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) project as the Principal Investigator and Director from the beginning of construction in 1994 until 2005. During that period, LIGO detectors reached design sensitivity and […]
Claude Nicollier
Claude Nicollier studied Physics at the University of Lausanne and received a Bachelor of Science degree in 1970. He then worked as a graduate scientist from 1970 to 1973 at the Institute of Astronomy at the University and at the Geneva Observatory before obtaining a Master of Science degree in Astrophysics from the University of Geneva in 1975. Nicollier has spent over […]
Edvard Moser
Edvard Moser is a Professor of Neuroscience and Director of the Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim. He is interested in how spatial location and spatial memory are computed in the brain. His work, conducted with May-Britt Moser as a long-term collaborator, includes the discovery of […]
Adam Riess
Adam Riess is a Professor of Astronomy and Physics at the Johns Hopkins University and a Senior member of the Science Staff at the Space Telescope Science Institute, both in Baltimore, MD. His research involves measurements of the cosmological framework with supernovae (exploding stars) and Cepheids (pulsating stars). In 1998 Dr. Riess led a study […]
Robert Wilson
Robert Wilson is an American astronomer, 1978 Nobel laureate in physics, who with Arno Allan Penzias discovered in 1964 the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB). The award purse was also shared with a third scientist, Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa, for unrelated work. While working on a new type of antenna at Bell Labs in Holmdel Township, New […]
Martin Rees
Lord Martin Rees is a Fellow of Trinity College and Emeritus Professor of Cosmology and Astrophysics at the University of Cambridge. He holds the honorary title of Astronomer Royal and also Visiting Professor at Imperial College London and at Leicester University. After studying at the University of Cambridge, he held post-doctoral positions in the UK […]
Garik Israelian
Dr Israelian, an astrophysicist at the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands (Spain), is the creative director and spiritual father of the STARMUS Festival. In 1999 he led a collaboration reported in the journal Nature that found the first observational evidence that supernova explosions are responsible for the formation of black holes. His research has led […]
Brian Schmidt
Brian Schmidt is the Vice-Chancellor of the Australian National University (ANU). He was previously a Distinguished Professor, Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow and astrophysicist at the University’s Mount Stromlo Observatory and Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics. He is known for his research in using supernovae as cosmological probes. He currently holds an Australia Research […]
Russell Schweickart
Russell “Rusty” Schweickart is an American aeronautical engineer, and a former NASA astronaut, research scientist, U.S. Air Force fighter pilot, as well as a former business executive and government executive. Selected in 1963 for NASA’s third astronaut group, he is best known as the Lunar Module Pilot on the 1969 Apollo 9 mission, the first manned flight test of the Lunar Module, on which he performed the first in-space test […]
Eric Betzig
After obtaining a BS in Physics from Caltech, Eric Betzig moved to Cornell, where his thesis involved the development of near-field optics — the first method to break the diffraction barrier in light microscopy. He then became a PI at AT&T Bell Labs in Murray Hill, NJ, where he further refined the technology and explored […]