Judith Gamora Cohen | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1946[1] |
| Alma mater | Radcliffe College,California Institute of Technology |
| Known for | Being one of the designers of theKeck observatory |
| Awards | Ernest F. Fullam Award of theDudley Observatory |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Astronomy |
| Institutions | University of California Berkeley,Kitt Peak National Observatory,California Institute of Technology |
| Doctoral advisor | Guido Münch |
| Website | https://www.pma.caltech.edu/content/judith-g-cohen andhttp://www.astro.caltech.edu/~jlc/ |
Judith Gamora Cohen (born 1946), is an American astronomer and the Kate Van Nuys Page Professor ofAstronomy at theCalifornia Institute of Technology. She is a recognized expert regarding theMilky Way Galaxy, particularly with respect to the Galaxy's outer halo. She also played a key role in the design and construction of theKeck Telescope.[2]
Born in 1946, inNew York City, New York, Cohen grew up inBrooklyn. Educated in the city's public schools, she also attended the Workmen's Circle schools in Brooklyn. The recipient of aNational Merit Scholarship, she attendedRadcliffe College, graduating from there in 1967 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in astronomy. In 1971, she was awarded a PhD in astronomy from theCalifornia Institute of Technology (Caltech). Her dissertation,The lithium isotope ratio in F and G field stars, was supervised byGuido Münch.[3][4]
A Miller Postdoctoral Fellow at theUniversity of California, Berkeley from 1971 to 1974, she was subsequently appointed as an assistant astronomer at theKitt Peak National Observatory in Tucson, Arizona.[5] Cohen joined the teaching faculty at Caltech in 1979, and was named the Kate Van Nuys Page professor of astronomy there in 2005. In addition, she serves as Caltech's co-chair of the Keck Science Steering Committee and is a member of theNational Academy of Sciences.[6] She has also delivered theCaroline Herschel Distinguished Lecture at theSpace Telescope Science Institute and theCecilia Payne-Gaposchkin Distinguished Lecture at theCenter for Astrophysics,Harvard University.
Cohen's research in the structure and evolution of stars and galaxies has included developing instrumentation for theKeck observatory and leading the Caltech Faint Galaxy Redshift Survey,[7] with more than 200 published papers.[8]
Her research has also been described in the popular press. Usinglaser-guidedadaptive optics at the Keck observatory, she showed that several unlikely tight clusters of stars orbiting theAndromeda Galaxy were not actually clusters at all.[9] Together with Evan Kirby, she has studied the mass of nearbydwarf galaxyTriangulum II, showing that this galaxy has a surprisingly large mass for its number of visible stars, making it a candidatedark matter galaxy.[10][11]
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Academics | |
| Other | |
