Robert Kennicutt

Robert C. Kennicutt, Jr. ( born 1951 ) is an American astronomer. He is Plumian Professor of Astronomy at the University of Cambridge.

Kennicutt studied physics at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. He received in 1973 the Bachelor. In 1976, he completed his astronomy studies at the University of Washington with a master's degree. At the same University he also received his doctorate in 1978 for Ph. D..

From 1999 to 2006 he was editor of the Astrophysical Journal.

His research interests are the structure and evolution of galaxies and the star formation in galaxies.

In 2007 he was awarded the Dannie Heineman Prize for Astrophysics. In 2009 he was awarded the Gruber Prize for Cosmology.

On Kennicutt, Jr., the empirical Kennicutt -Schmidt relationship goes back, which connects the (surface) density of neutral gas in the galaxy with the star formation rate.