Andrea Ghez
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Andrea Ghez is a Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of California, Los Angeles |
Andrea Ghez is a Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of California, Los Angeles. She uses novel, ground-based telescopic techniques to identify new star systems and illuminate the role of supermassive black holes in the evolution of galaxies. In 1998 Ghez answered one of astronomy's most important questions, showing that a monstrous black hole resides at the center of our Milky Way galaxy, some 26,000 light-years away, with a mass more than 3 million times that of the sun. The question had been a subject of raging debate among astronomers for more than a quarter of a century. In 2000 Ghez and colleagues reported that for the first time astronomers had seen stars accelerate around a supermassive black hole. Their research demonstrated that three stars had accelerated by more than 250,000 miles per hour a year as they orbited the black hole at the center of the Milky Way. They also reported, based on five years of measurements, that the star closest to the black hole had turned a corner in its orbit and that one of these stars may complete its orbit around the supermassive black hole in as little as 15 years. She was recently named a MacArthur Fellow (2008), and she has been elected to both the National Academy of Science and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2004). In addition to the Gold Shield Faculty Prize (2004), Sackler Prize (2004), and the 95th Faculty Research Lecture Award (2003), she has received the Maria Goeppert-Mayer Award from the American Physical Society (1999) and the Newton Lacy Pierce Prize from the American Astronomical Society (1998).
Introduced by: George E. McCluskey, Jr. professor of astronomy, Department of Physics
Interviewed by: M. Virginia McSwain, assistant professor of physics, Department of Physics
