Saul Perlmutter
Saul Perlmutter (born 1959) is an American astrophysicist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2003. He is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Perlmutter shared both the 2006 Shaw Prize in Astronomy and the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics with Adam Riess and Brian P. Schmidt for providing evidence that the expansion of the universe is accelerating.
Education
Saul Perlmutter was born one of three children in the family of professor emeritus of chemical and biomolecular engineering at University of Pennsylvania Daniel D. Perlmutter and professor emerita of Temple University’s School of Social Administration Felice (Feige) D. Perlmutter (née Davidson).[1][2] His maternal grandfather, the Yiddish teacher Samuel Davidson (1903-1989), immigrated to Canada (and then with his wife Chaika Newman to New York) from the Bessarabian town of Floreşti in 1919.[3]
Perlmutter graduated from Harvard magna cum laude in 1981 and received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley in 1986. Perlmutter's PhD thesis was on searching for Nemesis candidates under Richard A. Muller.[4]
Work
Perlmutter heads the Supernova Cosmology Project at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. It was this team along with the High-z Supernova Search Team which found evidence of the accelerating expansion of the universe. He is also a lead investigator in the Supernova/Acceleration Probe project.
Perlmutter currently teaches at UC Berkeley.
Awards
In 2002 Perlmutter won the Department of Energy's E. O. Lawrence Award in Physics. In 2003 he was awarded the California Scientist of the Year Award, and in 2005 he won the John Scott Award and the Padua Prize. In 2006 he shared the Shaw Prize in Astronomy with Adam Riess and Brian P. Schmidt.[5] The same year, Perlmutter won the Antonio Feltrinelli International Prize.
Perlmutter and his team shared the 2007 Gruber Cosmology Prize (a $500,000 award) with Schmidt and the High-Z Team for discovering the accelerating expansion of the universe.
In 2011, Perlmutter and Riess were named co-recipients of the Albert Einstein Medal.
Perlmutter shared the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics with Riess and Schmidt.[5]
See also
References
- ^ Daniel D. Perlmutter
- ^ Social Work Honors Its Own at Reunion
- ^ Samuel Davidson, led Yiddish revival
- ^ Goldhaber, Gerson. "The Acceleration of the Expansion of the Universe: A Brief Early History of the Supernova Cosmology Project (SCP)". Proceedings of the 8th UCLA Dark Matter Symposium. Marina del Rey. arXiv:0907.3526. Bibcode:2009AIPC.1166...53G. doi:10.1063/1.3232196.
{{cite journal}}:|access-date=requires|url=(help) - ^ a b "Nobel physics prize honours accelerating Universe find". BBC News. October 4, 2011.
External links
- Supernova Cosmology Project Website
- Supernova Cosmology Project
- Shaw Prize Press Release
- Nobel Prize in Physics Press Release
