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CXC Biographies: Dr. Robert Kirshner
Associate Director, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
 Robert
Kirshner is Professor of Astronomy at Harvard University and an
Associate Director of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for
Astrophysics. He graduated from Harvard College in 1970 and received
a Ph.D. in astronomy at Caltech four years later. After a postdoc at
Kitt Peak National Observatory in Tucson, he joined the faculty at
the University of Michigan for 9 years before moving to the Harvard
Astronomy Department in 1986. He served as Chairman of the department
from 1990-1997.
Professor Kirshner is an author of 200 research papers dealing with
supernovae, the large-scale distribution of galaxies, and the size
and shape of the Universe. His recent work on the acceleration of the
Universe was dubbed the "Science Breakthrough of the Year for 1998"
by Science Magazine. An article by Kirshner and his collaborators on
this topic appears in the January 1999 Scientific American. He was
elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1998.
Kirshner is a frequent public lecturer on science, including the
1997 Princeton University lectures, the 1998 Seyfert Lecture at
Vanderbilt University, and a featured talk to the National Science
Teachers Association at their national meeting in 1999. He is also
the teacher of Science A-35, a core curriculum course for 250 Harvard
undergraduates entitled "Matter in the Universe." The vivid (and
slightly hazardous) demonstrations in Science A-35 led to Kirshner's
being featured in Boston Magazine in their October 1998 article on
"Nutty Professors". Kirshner has made a series of video tapes on
"Cosmic Questions" for The Teaching Company which are widely
available.
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