Saul A. Teukolsky, the Hans A. Bethe Professor in Physics and Astrophysics at Cornell, has been named director of the Center for Radio-physics and Space Research (CRSR), one of the two research centers of the Cornell astronomy department. Teukolsky succeeds Peter Gierasch, professor of astronomy, who had been director of CRSR since 1984. The directorship has a five-year renewable term.
CRSR was founded in 1959 by Thomas Gold, now the J.L. Wetherill Professor Emeritus of Astronomy, to foster cooperation with astronomers, engineers, geologists and other researchers with specialties relevant to space sciences. Today the center administers nearly 100 grants and contracts by Cornell researchers, with a value of about $15 million a year.
Teukolsky was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, and earned his B.Sc., in both physics and applied mathematics, at the University of the Witwatersrand. He received his Ph.D. in theoretical physics in 1973 at the California Institute of Technology, where his thesis advisor was the eminent astrophysicist Kip Thorne.
Teukolsky joined the Cornell faculty as an assistant professor in 1974, becoming a full professor in 1983.
He has been a Sloan Foundation Fellow and a Guggenheim Fellow. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1996.
| Cornell Chronicle Front Page | | Table of Contents | | Cornell News Service Home Page |