Robert Kirshner

Paul Robert Kirshner ( born August 15, 1949 in Long Branch, New Jersey) is an American astronomer.

Life and work

Kirshner made ​​in 1970 from Harvard College with a BA ( magna cum laude) and received his doctorate in 1975 at Caltech. After a post-doctoral period at Kitt Peak National Observatory in 1976, he was Assistant Professor (and later professor of astronomy ) at the University of Michigan before he became in 1986 a professor at Harvard. 1990 to 1997 he was chairman of the astronomy faculty there from 1998 to 2002 and Head of the Infrared and Optical Division of the Center of Astronomy.

He was Clowes Professor of Science at Harvard University and 2004 Harvard College Professor of Astronomy in 2001. 2006/ 07 he was at the Kavli Institute.

In the late 1990s he discovered as part of the High Z Supernova Team of the accelerated expansion of the universe. The group used Type Ia supernovae for distance measurement. The leader Brian P. Schmidt was awarded in 2011 with Saul Perlmutter and Adam Riess the Nobel Prize for physics.

In 1998 he became a member of the National Academy of Sciences and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1992) and the American Philosophical Society. In 1978 he was Sloan Fellow.

From 2003 to 2005 he was president of the American Astronomical Society.

He is the father of Rebecca Rand Kirshner TV producer ( Rebecca Sinclair).

Awards (selection)

• 2007 Gruber Prize for Cosmology with the high- z group
• 2011 Dannie Heineman Prize for Astrophysics
• 2014 James Craig Watson Medal

Writings

• The extravagant universe: exploding stars, dark energy and the accelerating universe. Princeton University Press 2002