Irwin I. Shapiro
Irwin Ira Shapiro ( born October 10, 1929 in New York City ) is an American astrophysicist. Since 1982 he is a professor at Harvard University. From 1982 to 2004 he was the director of the Harvard - Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
Biography
Irwin Shapiro was born in 1929 in New York City. He initially studied mathematics at Cornell University, then physics at Harvard University, where he received his doctorate. In 1954, he joined the Lincoln Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT ) and was founded in 1967 just a professor of physics. In 1982 he accepted an appointment at Harvard University and was also Director of the Harvard - Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Shapiro won the 1991 Charles A. Whitten Medal and 1994, the William Bowie Medal, both awarded by the American Geophysical Union. For 2013, the Einstein Award of the American Physical Society was awarded.
Research
The work of Shapiro include studies in the fields of geophysics ( study of the structure of the Earth's core ) and astrophysics.
An important area of work were tests of general relativity, which were carried out in the solar system. The in 1964, discovered by Shapiro Shapiro delay was named after him. More recently, he worked on gravitational lenses and estimates the age of the universe.