Astrophysics Experimentalist

Parker Solar Probe flies into the fast solar wind and finds its source

June 7, 2023
Robert Sanders

Illustration of Parker Solar Probe approaching the sun

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has flown close enough to the sun to detect the fine structure of the solar wind close to where it is generated at the sun’s surface, revealing details that are lost as the wind exits the corona as a uniform blast of charged particles.

It’s like seeing jets of water emanating from a showerhead through the blast of water hitting...

https://news.berkeley.edu/2023/06/07/parker-solar-probe-flies-into-the-fast-sola…

M87 in 3D: New view of galaxy helps pin down mass of the black hole at its core

April 13, 2023
Robert Sanders

Image of a galaxy with a wire grid shape over it illustrating the M87 galaxy

Seen from Earth, the giant elliptical galaxy M87 is just a two-dimensional blob, though one that appears perfectly symmetrical and thus a favored target of amateur astronomers.
Yet, a new, highly detailed analysis of the motion of stars around its central supermassive black hole — the first black hole to be imaged by the Event Horizon Telescope...

Steven Kahn

Dean of Mathematical & Physical Sciences, Professor of Physics, Professor of Astronomy
Steven M. Kahn is a Professor of Physics and Astronomy. He previously served on the faculty in these departments from 1984-98, but returned to Berkeley in 2022 to take up the position of Dean of Mathematical and Physical Sciences. Kahn received his A.B. (summa cum laude) from Columbia in 1975 and his Ph.D. in physics at Berkeley in 1980. In addition to Berkeley, he has served on the faculties of Columbia, where he was the I.I. Rabi Professor of Physics, and at Stanford, where he was the Cassius Lamb Kirk Professor in the Natural Sciences. Kahn is an experimental astrophysicist and cosmologist...

Stuart Bale Awarded AGU Fellowship

September 26, 2022

Stuart Bale in the lab

Berkeley Physics is delighted to announce that Professor Stuart Bale is among the 2022 Class of AGU Fellows.

The American Geophysical Union (AGU) recognizes each awardee for their remarkable innovation and/or sustained scientific impact, as well as their efforts in fostering...

https://eos.org/agu-news/agu-announces-the-2022-class-of-fellows

Raffaella Margutti

Associate Professor, Marc and Cristina Bensadoun Professor of Physics

Raffaella Margutti received her undergraduate degree in Astrophysics in 2006 (magna cum laude), and her PhD in Physics and Astronomy from the University of Milano Bicocca in 2010. Margutti is a Sloan Fellow in Physics (2019), a CIFAR global scholar in Gravity and the Extreme Universe (2019), and received the 2022 New Horizons in Physics Prize for leadership in laying foundations for electromagnetic observations of sources of gravitational waves, and leadership in extracting rich information from the first observed collision of two neutron stars.

Research Interests

Specialty...

Marc Davis

Professor Emeritus

Marc Davis received his B.S. in 1969 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his Ph.D. in 1973 from Princeton. After a lectureship at Princeton he was an assistant/associate Professor of Astronomy at Harvard University from 1975, and moved to Berkeley in 1981. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Science. He has been a Sloan Foundation Fellow and a Miller Professor.

Research Interests

My research is focused on...

William Chinowsky

Professor Emeritus

Professor of Physics, UC Berkeley, since 1961, Emeritus since 1993. A.B. from Columbia University; Ph.D. from Columbia University, 1955. Staff Physicist, Brookhaven National Laboratory, 1954-1961; Guggenheim Fellow, 1966-67, 1978-1979, Fellow, American Physical Society. Program Director, National Science Foundation, 1992-1996. Staff Senior Scientist, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Richard Muller

Professor Emeritus

Richard A. Muller received his A. B. degree from Columbia University, and his Ph.D. at Berkeley working under Luis Alvarez. He has been on the faculty at Berkeley since 1978. He is a fellow of the APS and of the AAAS, and his awards include the Texas Instruments Founders Prize, the NSF Alan T. Waterman Award, and a MacArthur Foundation Prize Fellowship.

Research Interests

I received my Ph.D. in elementary particle physics, but have since moved into astrophysics (anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background; supernovae for cosmology) and geophysics (origin of the earth’s magnetic...