Alex Filippenko, narrative bios
Short bio:
Alex Filippenko received his Ph.D. in Astronomy from Caltech in 1984 and joined the UC Berkeley faculty in 1986. He has coauthored over 570 scientific publications, is one of the world's most highly cited astronomers, and has won numerous prizes for his research, most recently the 2007 Gruber Cosmology Prize. He has won the top teaching awards at Berkeley, and students have voted him the "Best Professor" on campus six times. In 2006, he was named the Carnegie/CASE National Professor of the Year among doctoral institutions. The recipient of the 2004 Carl Sagan Prize for Science Popularization, he has appeared in many television documentaries, produced several astronomy video courses, and coauthored an award-winning textbook.
Long bio:
Alex Filippenko received his BA in Physics from UC Santa Barbara in 1979 and his PhD in Astronomy from Caltech in 1984. After a two-year Miller Fellowship at UC Berkeley, he joined the Berkeley faculty in 1986. An observational astronomer, he makes frequent use of the 10-meter Keck telescopes, the Hubble Space Telescope, and other observatories. His primary areas of research are supernovae, active galaxies, black holes, gamma-ray bursts, and the observational cosmology. His research accomplishments, documented in over 570 published articles, have been recognized by several major prizes including the Richtmyer Memorial Award (2007), and he is one of the world's most highly cited astronomers. He was a member of both teams that discovered the accelerating expansion of the Universe, propelled by mysterious "dark energy." This was voted the top "Science Breakthrough of 1998" by Science magazine, and the teams received the 2007 Gruber Cosmology Prize for their discovery.
Filippenko has won the highest teaching awards at UC Berkeley and has been voted the "Best Professor" on campus six times (1995, 2001, 2003, 2004, 2006, 2008). In 2006, he was selected as the Carnegie/CASE Doctoral and Research Universities National Professor of the Year. He has appeared in many TV documentaries, including "Stephen Hawking's Universe," "Runaway Universe," "Exploring Time," numerous episodes of "The Universe" on The History Channel, and (most recently) "400 Years of the Telescope" (part of the official "International Year of Astronomy" 2009 celebration). Having given over 500 popular talks to a very wide range of audiences, he is in much demand as a speaker. He has produced three astronomy video courses with The Teaching Company, including a 96-lecture series in 2007, and in 2001 he coauthored an award-winning textbook, now in its third edition. He is the recipient of the 2004 Carl Sagan Prize for Science Popularization.
An avid tennis player, skier, and hiker, Filippenko also enjoys world travel, and he is addicted to experiencing total solar eclipses (9 and counting, with #10 coming up on 22 July 2009).
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