Rachel Somerville

Rachel Somerville (c. 1967) is an American astrophysicist.

Somerville 1989 he received her bachelor's degree in physics at Reed College in Portland (Oregon ) and received his doctorate at the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1997. She is since 2011 Downsbrough Professor of Astrophysics at Rutgers University.

It deals with the theory of the origin and evolution of galaxies and the earlier observation (where she was involved in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field and the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey ( GOODS ) ). Somerville is an expert on semi- analytical modeling of galaxy formation in the cosmological context. She heads the theory group for CANDELS on the Hubble Space Telescope.

2013 she was awarded the Dannie Heineman Prize for Astrophysics.