Back

 Prev Event Astronomy Lecture: Professor Geoff Marcy Speaks on Exoplanets Next Event 

Dr. Marcy is a Professor of Astronomy at UC Berkeley and Director of Berkeley's "Center for Integrative Planetary Science'', a research unit designed to study the formation, geophysics, chemistry and evolution of planets.  Dr. Marcy is a leading astrophysicist in the detection and characterization of exoplanets. He and collaborators have discovered over 250 extrasolar planets, allowing ongoing study of their masses, radii, and orbits, including eccentricities and misalignments. His research team discovered the first multiple planet system (Upsilon Andromedae), the first saturn-sized planet, and the first Neptune-size planet. He is a co-investigator with the NASA Kepler mission that recently announced 1230 exoplanets, most being smaller than twice the size of Earth. Kepler-10b has a radius only 1.4 times that of Earth. His current research focuses on finding other Earth-size planets and solar systems similar to our own. Ongoing work is designed to study the sizes, occurrence frequency, chemical composition, and the orbits of Earth-size planets.

BIOGRAPHY

Dr. Marcy is a Professor of Astronomy at UC Berkeley and an Adjunct Professor of Physics and Astronomy at San Francisco State University. He is the Director of Berkeley's "Center for Integrative Planetary Science'', a research unit designed to study the formation, geophysics, chemistry and evolution of planets.  He is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences and has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the NASA Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement. He was named Discovery Magazine's Space Scientist of the Year in 2003.   He was also co-recipient of the prestigious Shaw Prize.