George Coyne

George V. Coyne, SJ ( born January 19, 1933, Baltimore) is an American Jesuit priest and astronomer. For many years he was director of the Vatican Observatory.

Life

Even with 18 years Coyne joined the Catholic order of the Jesuits. Later, at the age of 25, he then closed his studies at Fordham University in New York City with a Bachelor in Mathematics and a degree in philosophy from. In 1962 he received his doctorate with a thesis on spectroscopy of the lunar surface at Georgetown University. He then studied at Woodstock College in Maryland Catholic Theology, concluded this with a degree in 1965 and received priestly ordination in 1965. Meanwhile, he worked as an astronomer at the Harvard University, the University of Scranton and the University of Arizona, where he eventually became a professor at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory ( LPL UA ) from 1966.

From 1978, Coyne was then director of the Vatican Observatory, but remained half- year at the University of Arizona as a professor of astronomy. In August 2006, he resigned his directorship at the Vatican from José Gabriel Funes to Fr.

In January 2010, he received the George Van Biesbroeck Prize of the American Astronomical Society ( AAS) for its 1986 financed with funds from the Vatican's summer academy for young astronomers in the Vatican Observatory " Specola " in Castel Gandolfo.

George Coyne is a member of the International Astronomical Union, the American Astronomical Society, the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, the American Physical Society and the Optical Society of America.