| | 21 | Name: | Dr. Philip Morrison | | | Institution: | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | | | Year Elected: | 1974 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 101. Astronomy | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1915 | | | Death Date: | April 22, 2005 | | | | |
| 22 | Name: | Dr. Gerry Neugebauer | | | Institution: | California Institute of Technology | | | Year Elected: | 1986 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 101. Astronomy | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1932 | | | Death Date: | September 26, 2014 | | | | | | |
At the time of his death September 26. 2014, at the age of 82, Gerry Neugebauer was the Robert A. Millikan Professor of Physics Emeritus at the California Institute of Technology, where for many years he also directed the Palomar Observatory. Dr. Neugebauer received his Ph.D. from CalTech in 1960, began his professorial career there in 1962 and also served as chairman of the division of physics, mathematics and astronomy from 1988-93. His major contributions in the field include an infrared survey of three-fourths of the sky at two microns. His observations led to the realization of its complex structure, with a point source superimposed on a large, diffuse central source. In addition he made careful observations of numerous objects such as the Orion nebula, Seyfert galaxies, quasars, OH sources, and other cool objects whose enormous infrared intensities dominate their total flux and are of significance in elucidating their physical natures. The complex energy distributions in these objects have shown that an enormous excess of low-temperature radiation presumably arising from dust is a common property of the formation of stars, the opaque molecular clouds surrounding dying giant stars, and the explosion of galactic nuclei. Dr. Neugebauer opened up infrared areas in astronomy with satellites and regularly followed his space experiments with ground-based investigations. Winner of the Rumford Prize (1986) and a two-time recipient of the NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal (1972, 1984), Dr. Neugebauer had been elected to the membership of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. He was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1986. | |
| 23 | Name: | Dr. Donald E. Osterbrock | | | Institution: | University of California, Santa Cruz | | | Year Elected: | 1991 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 101. Astronomy | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1924 | | | Death Date: | January 11, 2007 | | | | |
| 24 | Name: | Dr. Jeremiah P. Ostriker | | | Institution: | Princeton University | | | Year Elected: | 1994 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 101. Astronomy | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1937 | | | | | | |
Jeremiah Ostriker was born April 13, 1937 in New York. He received his A.B. in physics and chemistry from Harvard University in 1959 and his Ph.D. in astrophysics from the University of Chicago in 1964 under the direction of S. Chandrasekhar. Upon completion of his Ph.D., he went to the University of Cambridge (England) as an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow. In 1965 he came to Princeton University as an Assistant Professor, rising through the ranks to Professor, where he continues to teach and conduct research. At Princeton University, in addition to his professorship, he was the Chair of the Department of Astrophysical Sciences and Director of the Princeton University Observatory from 1979 to 1995 when he became the Provost of the University, leaving that position in 2001. He spent the years 2001-2004 as the Plumian Professor of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy at the University of Cambridge (England). He was the Director of the Princeton Institute for Computational Science and Engineering (PICSciE) at Princeton University, from 2005-15. Within the National Academy of Sciences, Ostriker was elected Treasurer for the term 2008-2012 and, associated with that position, is a member of the NAS Council and the Governing Board of the National Research Committee (1994-95 and 2007-08), the Assembly of Mathematical and Physical Sciences (1977-80), the Commission on Physical Sciences, Mathematics and Resources (1987-91), and the Committee on Astronomy and Astrophysics (1992-95). He was a member of the Class I (Physical Sciences) Membership Committee in 1977, 1978, 1987, 1988, 1993, 2007 and 2008. He served on the Executive Committee of the Astronomy and Astrophysics Decennial Surveys (1969-73, 1978-83 and 1988-91), recently chaired the Committee to Examine the Methodology for the Assessment of Research Doctorate Programs (2002-03), and the Committee to Assess Research Doctorate Programs (2005-08). Ostriker is a member of the American Astronomical Society, the International Astronomical Union, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, the Royal Astronomical Society, the American Philosophical Society, and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, and he was recently elected as a Foreign Member of the Royal Society. He is a trustee of the American Museum of Natural History and was on the Editorial Board and Trustee of the Princeton University Press. Over the years, Ostriker has received numerous awards for his achievements, including a National Science Foundation Fellowship, an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, the Helen B. Warner Prize of the American Astronomical Society, the Sherman Fairchild Fellowship of the California Institute of Technology, the Henry Norris Russell Prize of the American Astronomical Society, the Smithsonian Institution's Regents Fellowship, Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Vainu Bappu Memorial Award of the Indian National Science Academy, the Karl Schwarzschild Medal of the Astronomische Gesellschaft of Germany, the U.S. National Medal of Science, the British Royal Astronomical Society Gold Medal, the James Craig Watson Medal of the National Academy of Science, and the Bruce Medal from the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. The U.S. National Medal of Science recognized him "for his bold astrophysical insights, which have revolutionized concepts of the nature of pulsars, the 'ecosystem' of stars and gas in our Galaxy, the sizes and masses of galaxies, the nature and distribution of dark matter and ordinary matter in the Universe, and the formation of galaxies and other cosmological structures." Ostriker has been an influential researcher in one of the most exciting areas of modern science, theoretical astrophysics, with current primary work in the area of cosmology, particularly in the efforts to measure and determine the nature of the prevalent dark matter and dark energy components. He has investigated many areas of astrophysical research, including the structure and oscillations of rotating stars, the stability of galaxies, the evolution of globular clusters and other star systems, pulsars, X-ray binary stars, the dynamics of clusters of galaxies, gravitational lensing, astrophysical blast waves, quasars, active galactic nuclei and the formation of galaxies. Ostriker has pioneered in the development of very large-scale numerical simulations of astrophysical phenomena such as galaxy formation and quasar feedback. He continues to teach, supervise and collaborate with many graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and senior researchers. | |
| 25 | Name: | Dr. P. James E. Peebles | | | Institution: | Princeton University | | | Year Elected: | 2004 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 101. Astronomy | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1935 | | | | | | |
An outstanding theoretical cosmologist, Jim Peebles has pioneered two important themes of modern cosmology: using physics and observations to reach a better understanding of cosmic evolution from the big bang, and seeking a quantitative understanding of the large-scale structure of the universe. After receiving his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1962, Dr. Peebles started to look into testable effects of a hot dense epoch after the big bang. In particular, he found that if thermal radiation exists, the universe must have gone through a stage about 100 seconds after the big bang when about 25 percent of the matter combined to form helium nuclei (the sun is about 25 percent helium). The agreement between observations and the theory of the abundance of light nuclei is a major factor in support of the modern cosmological model. Dr. Peebles has been associated with Princeton University, where he is presently Albert Einstein Professor of Science Emeritus, for over 40 years. A member of the American Physical Society, the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, Dr. Peebles has received many honors for his accomplishments, including the A.C. Morrison Award in National Science (1977), the Royal Astronomical Society's Eddington Medal (1981) and Gold Medal (1998) and the Gruber Cosmology Prize (2000). In 2019 he received the Nobel Prize in Physics. | |
| 26 | Name: | Dr. Saul Perlmutter | | | Institution: | University of California, Berkeley; Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory | | | Year Elected: | 2014 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 101. Astronomy | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1959 | | | | |
| 27 | Name: | Dr. Walter Orr Roberts | | | Institution: | Universal Corporation for Atmospheric Research | | | Year Elected: | 1973 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 101. Astronomy | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1915 | | | Death Date: | 3/12/90 | | | | |
| 28 | Name: | Dr. Vera C. Rubin | | | Institution: | Carnegie Institution of Washington | | | Year Elected: | 1995 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 101. Astronomy | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1928 | | | Death Date: | December 25, 2016 | | | | | | |
Vera C. Rubin was an observational astronomer who studied the motions of gas and stars in galaxies and motions of galaxies in the universe. Her work was influential in discovering that most of the matter in the universe is dark. She was a graduate of Vassar College, Cornell University, and Georgetown University; George Gamow was her thesis professor. She was a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. President Clinton awarded her the National Medal of Science (1993). She received the Weizmann Women and Science Award, the Bruce Medal of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, the Gruber International Cosmology Prize, the Watson Medal of the National Academy of Sciences and the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (London); the previous award to a woman was to Caroline Herschel in 1828. She was active in encouraging and supporting women in science. Her husband and their four children were all Ph.D. scientists. She was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1995. Vera Rubin died December 25, 2016, at age 88. | |
| 29 | Name: | Dr. Malvin A. Ruderman | | | Institution: | Columbia University | | | Year Elected: | 1996 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 101. Astronomy | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1927 | | | | | | |
Malvin A. Ruderman is Centennial Professor of Physics and Applied Physics at Columbia University. His main research interests in recent years have been the structure of neutron stars and how these objects convert so much of the spin-energy which they have when they are formed into beams of high energy radiation. Dr. Ruderman holds a B.A. from Columbia (1945) and a Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology (1951). Among his recent publications is "A Biography of the Magnetic Field of a Neutron Star" (2004). | |
| 30 | Name: | Dr. Allan Rex Sandage | | | Institution: | Observatories of Carnegie Institution of Washington | | | Year Elected: | 1995 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 101. Astronomy | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1926 | | | Death Date: | November 13, 2010 | | | | | | |
Astronomer Allan Sandage combined his impressive astronomical knowledge with outstanding scientific judgment and an extraordinary ability to discern new concepts that were ripe for development. Based at the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington from 1956 until his death, he was best known for his extended work establishing the rate of expansion of the universe (the red-shift distance or Hubble relationship). He was also noted for his discovery in the M-82 galaxy of jets erupting from the core, and for having conducted important spectral studies of globular clusters. Dr. Sandage received his Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology in 1953, and he had also served as Homewood Professor of Physics at Johns Hopkins University and as a senior research scientist at NASA's Space Telescope Scientific Institute. His many honors include the Warner Prize (1960), the Eddington Medal (1963), the National Medal of Science (1970), the Bruce Medal (1975) and the Crafoord Prize (1991). Allan Sandage died November 13, 2010, at age 84, in San Gabriel, California. | |
| 31 | Name: | Dr. Maarten Schmidt | | | Institution: | California Institute of Technology | | | Year Elected: | 2000 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 101. Astronomy | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1929 | | | Death Date: | September 17, 2022 | | | | | | |
Maarten Schmidt's discovery of the true distance of quasi-stellar objects expanded the dimensions of the known universe at the time (1963) by many orders of magnitude. His early work in galactic structure and in developing mass models for the Galaxy is also of great import. Dr. Schmidt and his collaborators have carried out several innovative surveys for quasars, improving in sensitivity and probing further in space as technological improvements permitted. He developed an optimal statistical technique (the V/V max test) for estimating the mean distance of a complete brightness limited sample, which has found widespread application in many fields. In 2008 he was awarded the first Kavli Prize in astrophysics for this work. In addition to holding many administrative positions within the California Institute of Technology, Dr. Schmidt served as president of the American Astronomical Society from 1984-86 and as Chair of the Board of Directors of the Association of Universities Research in Astronomy from 1992-95. He has been Francis L. Moseley Professor of Astronomy Emeritus at Cal Tech since 1996. | |
| 32 | Name: | Dr. Martin Schwarzschild | | | Institution: | Princeton University | | | Year Elected: | 1981 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 101. Astronomy | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1912 | | | Death Date: | 4/10/97 | | | | |
| 33 | Name: | Dr. Sara Seager | | | Institution: | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | | | Year Elected: | 2018 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 101. Astronomy | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1971 | | | | | | |
Sara Seager is an astrophysicist, planetary scientist and Class of 1941 Professor at the Massachussetts Institute of Technology. Her research aims to find exoplanets similar to Earth that meet the conditions for life. Her invetigations include work on transmission spectroscopy that led to the first ever detection of an exoplanet atmosphere. She did ground-breaking work on atmospheric retrieval and the brightness variability of terrestrial exoplanetsShe was co-investigator on TESS, a NASA Explorer Mission launched in April 2018, was chair of the NASA Science and Technology Definition Team for a Probe-class Starshade, and co-chairs the concept team for the NASA Habitable Planet Imaging Mission. Sara Seager was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2018. | |
| 34 | Name: | Dr. Irwin I. Shapiro | | | Institution: | Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Harvard University & Massachusetts Institute of Technology | | | Year Elected: | 1998 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 101. Astronomy | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1929 | | | | | | |
Irwin Shapiro formerly directed the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, arguably the world's largest astronomical research institution, and has been Timken University Professor at Harvard since 1997 and Schlumberger Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology since 1985. He proposed and, with colleagues, verified the fourth test of general relativity, now called the "Shapiro effect." With a former student he initiated the revolution in geodesy based on the use of GPS signals to determine via interferometry the vector distance between points on the Earth with errors at the millimeter level. Strongly advocating improved pre-college science teaching, he has sponsored a cutting-edge educational group at the Center for Astrophysics and has guided the preparation of imaginative new texts and hands-on materials. Dr. Shapiro holds a Ph.D. in physics from Harvard (1955) and is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences (1969); the National Academy of Sciences (1974); and the American Astronomical Society (division chairman, 1970-71) and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science; the American Geophysical Union; and the American Physical Society. He was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1998. | |
| 35 | Name: | Dr. Frank H. Shu | | | Institution: | National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan | | | Year Elected: | 2003 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 101. Astronomy | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1943 | | | Death Date: | April 22, 2023 | | | | | | |
In 2003 Frank Shu left his University Professor position at the University of California, Berkeley to become president of "Taiwan's MIT," National Tsing Hua University. In 2007, he returned to the University of California - this time UC San Diego. He initially made his reputation with the density wave theory of spiral arms in spiral galaxies (with C.C. Lin) and has developed a picture of how stars are formed in pressure waves in these gas clouds. His work on star formation today provides the basic framework guiding both theory and observation. More recently he has turned to the distribution of chondrules in meteorites to help understand the formation of planets from stellar disks. A particularly lucid lecturer, his text, The Physical Universe, is considered "the Feynman Lectures of astronomy." Dr. Shu was awarded the Shaw Prize in Astrophysics in 2009. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences (1987); the American Academy of Arts & Sciences (1992); the Academia Sinica; and the American Astronomical Society (president, 1994-96). | |
| 36 | Name: | Dr. David Nathaniel Spergel | | | Institution: | Simons Foundation; Princeton University | | | Year Elected: | 2022 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 101. Astronomy | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1961 | | | | | | |
David Spergel is the President of the Simons Foundation and is the Charles Young Professor of Astronomy Emeritus at Princeton. Spergel received his AB from Princeton in 1982, spent a year at Oxford studying with James Binney and then received his PhD from Harvard in 1986. After spending a year at the IAS, he joined the Princeton faculty in 1987. He was Department Chair at Princeton from 2005-2015 and was the Founding Director at the Center for Computational Astrophysics at the Flatiron Institute from 2016-2021. AMNH awarded him an Honorary D.Sc. (2021).
Spergel is a member of the NAS and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His work has been recognized with a MacArthur Fellowship, a Sloan Fellowship, the Presidential Young Investigator Award, the Shaw Prize, the Heinemann Prize, the Gruber Prize and the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics. The American Astronomical Society has honored him with the Warner Prize, the Heineman Prize and as a Legacy Fellow. He was twice awarded the NASA Exceptional Service Award. He received Princeton University’s Presidential Distinguished Teaching Award and the National Society of Black Physicists’ Mentorship Award.
Spergel is noted for his work on the WMAP satellite that help establish the standard model of cosmology, map the initial conditions of the universe, and determine its basic properties. He is the author of over 400 refereed papers with over 100,000 citations. | |
| 37 | Name: | Dr. Lyman Spitzer | | | Institution: | Princeton University | | | Year Elected: | 1959 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 101. Astronomy | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1914 | | | Death Date: | 3/31/97 | | | | |
| 38 | Name: | Dr. Edward C. Stone | | | Institution: | Thirty Meter Telescope International Observatory; California Institute of Technology; Jet Propulsion Laboratory | | | Year Elected: | 1993 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 101. Astronomy | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1936 | | | Death Date: | June 9, 2024 | | | | | | |
Edward C. Stone is the David Morrisroe Professor of Physics at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and director emeritus of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He has also served as chair of Caltech's Division of Physics, Mathematics, and Astronomy and oversaw the development of the Keck Observatory as Vice President for Astronomical Facilities and chairman of the California Association for Research in Astronomy. He is also a director of the W. M. Keck Foundation. Since 1972, Dr. Stone has been the project scientist for the Voyager Mission at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, coordinating the scientific study of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune and Voyager's continuing exploration of the outer heliosphere and search for the edge of interstellar space. Following his first instrument on a Discoverer satellite in 1961, Dr. Stone has been a principal investigator on eight NASA spacecraft and a co-investigator on five others, all carrying instruments for studying galactic cosmic rays, solar energetic particles, and planetary magnetospheres. Dr. Stone is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, president of the International Academy of Astronautics, and a vice president of COSPAR. Among his awards and honors, Dr. Stone received the National Medal of Science from President George H.W. Bush (1991), the Magellanic Premium from the American Philosophical Society, and Distinguished Service Medals from NASA. In 1996, asteroid (5841) was named after him. In 2015 he was awarded the Alumni Medal from the University of Chicago. | |
| 39 | Name: | Dr. Jill Cornell Tarter | | | Institution: | SETI Institute | | | Year Elected: | 2024 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 101. Astronomy | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1944 | | | | | | |
Jill Tarter received her Bachelor of Engineering Physics Degree with Distinction from Cornell University and her Master’s Degree and a Ph.D. in Astronomy from the University of California, Berkeley. She served as Project Scientist for NASA’s SETI program, the High Resolution Microwave Survey, and has conducted numerous observational programs at radio observatories worldwide. Since the termination of funding for NASA’s SETI program in 1993, she has served in a leadership role to secure private funding to continue the exploratory science. Currently, she serves on the management board for the Allen Telescope Array, an innovative array of 350 (when fully realized) 6-m antennas at the Hat Creek Radio Observatory, it will simultaneously survey the radio universe for known and unexpected sources of astrophysical emissions, and speed up the search for radio emissions from other distant technologies by orders of magnitude.
Tarter’s work has brought her wide recognition in the scientific community, including the Lifetime Achievement Award from Women in Aerospace, two Public Service Medals from NASA, Chabot Observatory’s Person of the Year award (1997), Women of Achievement Award in the Science and Technology category by the Women’s Fund and the San Jose Mercury News (1998), and the Tesla Award of Technology at the Telluride Tech Festival (2001). She was elected an AAAS Fellow in 2002 and a California Academy of Sciences Fellow in 2003. In 2004 Time Magazine named her one of the Time 100 most influential people in the world, and in 2005 Tarter was awarded the Carl Sagan Prize for Science Popularization at Wonderfest, the biannual San Francisco Bay Area Festival of Science.
Tarter is deeply involved in the education of future citizens and scientists. In addition to her scientific leadership at NASA and SETI Institute, Tarter was the Principal Investigator for two curriculum development projects funded by NSF, NASA, and others. The first, the Life in the Universe series, created 6 science teaching guides for grades 3-9 (published 1994-96). Her second project, Voyages Through Time, is an integrated high school science curriculum on the fundamental theme of evolution in six modules: Cosmic Evolution, Planetary Evolution, Origin of Life, Evolution of Life, Hominid Evolution and Evolution of Technology (published 2003). Tarter is a frequent speaker for science teacher meetings and at museums and science centers, bringing her commitment to science and education to both teachers and the public. Many people are now familiar with her work as portrayed by Jodie Foster in the movie Contact. | |
| 40 | Name: | Dr. Patrick Thaddeus | | | Institution: | Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Harvard University | | | Year Elected: | 2011 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 101. Astronomy | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1932 | | | Death Date: | April 28, 2017 | | | | | | |
Pat Thaddeus’ astronomy research career centered on molecules. His pioneering and sophisticated laboratory methods of generating exotic molecules that might be observable in space, and measuring their spectra so as to be able to find these molecules in space through these microwave spectral signatures, enabled him to be without peer in this field. He and his group have thus discovered approximately 20 percent of the approximate 160 molecules now known to exist in interstellar space. His most important discoveries ranged from (unexpected) long carbon-chain molecules to (even more unexpected) negative ions, all of which have had a major impact on our understanding of the chemistry of interstellar space. He and his group have also conducted truly unique large-scale surveys of interstellar carbon monoxide which is a proxy for the difficult to observe hydrogen molecule; the high point of these surveys was the production of an exquisite, detailed map of our galaxy in three dimensions (radial velocity as well as sky coordinates), which now adorns walls in observatories world wide and has led to many further advances in our understanding of the structure of the Milky Way Galaxy. He earned his Ph.D. in 1960 from Columbia University. He was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1987 and of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 1989, and received the Herschel Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 2001 and the Sir Harold Thompson Memorial Award in 2002. He was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2011. Patrick Thaddeus died April 28, 2017, at the age of 84. | |
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