Stephen Thorsett
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Stephen Erik Thorsett (b. December 3, 1964 in New Haven, Connecticut) is an American professor and astronomer. His research interests include radio pulsars and gamma ray bursts. He is best known for measurements of the masses of neutron stars and for the use of binary pulsars to test the theory of general relativity. In 2004, with collaborators Ingrid Stairs and Zaven Arzoumanian, he made the first measurement of gravitational spin-orbit coupling in a binary system [1]. He helped discover the oldest known extrasolar planet and was the first to suggest that a nearby gamma ray burst might cause a mass extinction event.
Thorsett is a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and has been appointed dean of the Division of Physical and Biological Sciences, effective July 1, 2006 [2]. Currently he is working with his Ph.D. student Bülent Kiziltan on high energy astrophysics, particularly on the Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST) and pulsars.
He received a B.A. in mathematics from Carleton College in 1987 and an M.A. (1989) and Ph.D. (1991) in physics from Princeton University. He was a Robert A. Millikan Research Fellow in physics at Caltech and an assistant professor of physics at Princeton before joining UCSC in 1999. He received the Ernest F. Fullam Award of the Dudley Observatory in 1994, and was named an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow in 1997.
[edit] External link
| University of California, Santa Cruz Santa Cruz, California |
||
 |
Colleges |
Cowell College · Stevenson College · Crown College · Merrill College · Porter College · Kresge College · Oakes College · College Eight · College Nine · College Ten |
|---|---|---|
| Professional School | ||
| Research & Services |
· Lick Observatory · W. M. Keck Observatory · Dickens Project · NASA Ames Research Center UARC · Silicon Valley Initiatives · Center for Adaptive Optics · Center for Biomolecular Science and Engineering · Institute of Marine Sciences & Long Marine Lab · UCSC Arboretum · University of California Police Department · UC Santa Cruz Fire Department |
|
| Student Media | ||
