Rachel Bean | |
---|---|
Awards | Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers Cottrell Scholar Award NASA Group Achievement Award |
Academic background | |
Education | Cambridge University |
Alma mater | Imperial College London |
Academic work | |
Discipline | Astronomy |
Sub-discipline | Dark energy |
Institutions | Cornell University |
Rachel Bean is a cosmologist and theoretical astrophysicist. [1] She is a professor of astronomy [2] and the interim dean of the Cornell University College of Arts and Sciences.
Bean received her bachelor's degree (Natural Sciences) from Cambridge University (1995). After graduation,she worked in the strategy division at Accenture before returning to academia. She received her master's (1999) and doctorate (2002) in theoretical physics from Imperial College London. She did postdoctoral research at Princeton University,before becoming a faculty member at Cornell University in 2005. [3]
Bean’s research focuses on cosmological tests of the nature of dark energy and gravity,and the physical origins of primordial inflation,using data from large-scale structure and the cosmic microwave background. She is actively involved in a number of international astronomical surveys including the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST),the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI),and the Euclid mission. [1]
On July 13,2023,Bean succeeded Ray Jayawardhana as the interim dean of the Cornell University College of Arts and Sciences. [4]
The cosmic microwave background is microwave radiation that fills all space in the observable universe. It is a remnant that provides an important source of data on the primordial universe. With a standard optical telescope,the background space between stars and galaxies is almost completely dark. However,a sufficiently sensitive radio telescope detects a faint background glow that is almost uniform and is not associated with any star,galaxy,or other object. This glow is strongest in the microwave region of the radio spectrum. The accidental discovery of the CMB in 1965 by American radio astronomers Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson was the culmination of work initiated in the 1940s.
The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP),originally known as the Microwave Anisotropy Probe,was a NASA spacecraft operating from 2001 to 2010 which measured temperature differences across the sky in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) –the radiant heat remaining from the Big Bang. Headed by Professor Charles L. Bennett of Johns Hopkins University,the mission was developed in a joint partnership between the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and Princeton University. The WMAP spacecraft was launched on 30 June 2001 from Florida. The WMAP mission succeeded the COBE space mission and was the second medium-class (MIDEX) spacecraft in the NASA Explorer program. In 2003,MAP was renamed WMAP in honor of cosmologist David Todd Wilkinson (1935–2002),who had been a member of the mission's science team. After nine years of operations,WMAP was switched off in 2010,following the launch of the more advanced Planck spacecraft by European Space Agency (ESA) in 2009.
Rashid Alievich Sunyaev is a German,Soviet,and Russian astrophysicist of Tatar descent. He got his MS degree from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT) in 1966. He became a professor at MIPT in 1974. Sunyaev was the head of the High Energy Astrophysics Department of the Russian Academy of Sciences,and has been chief scientist of the Academy's Space Research Institute since 1992. He has also been a director of the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garching,Germany since 1996,and Maureen and John Hendricks Distinguished Visiting Professor in the School of Natural Sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton since 2010.
Phillip James Edwin Peebles is a Canadian-American astrophysicist,astronomer,and theoretical cosmologist who is currently the Albert Einstein Professor in Science,emeritus,at Princeton University. He is widely regarded as one of the world's leading theoretical cosmologists in the period since 1970,with major theoretical contributions to primordial nucleosynthesis,dark matter,the cosmic microwave background,and structure formation.
The College of Arts and Sciences is a division of Cornell University. It has been part of the university since its founding,although its name has changed over time. It grants bachelor's degrees,and masters and doctorates through affiliation with the Cornell University Graduate School. Its major academic buildings are located on the Arts Quad and include some of the university's oldest buildings. The college offers courses in many fields of study and is the largest college at Cornell by undergraduate enrollment.
Planck was a space observatory operated by the European Space Agency (ESA) from 2009 to 2013. It was an ambitious project that aimed to map the anisotropies of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) at microwave and infrared frequencies,with high sensitivity and small angular resolution. The mission was highly successful and substantially improved upon observations made by the NASA Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP).
David Nathaniel Spergel is an American theoretical astrophysicist and the Emeritus Charles A. Young Professor of Astronomy on the Class of 1897 Foundation at Princeton University. Since 2021,he has been the President of the Simons Foundation. He is known for his work on the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) project. In 2022,Spergel accepted the chair of NASA's UAP independent study team.
Charles L. Bennett is an American observational astrophysicist. He is a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor,the Alumni Centennial Professor of Physics and Astronomy and a Gilman Scholar at Johns Hopkins University. He is the Principal Investigator of NASA's highly successful Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP).
Edward L. (Ned) Wright is an American astrophysicist and cosmologist,well known for his achievements in the COBE,WISE,and WMAP projects and as a strong Big Bang proponent in web tutorials on cosmology and theory of relativity.
Lyman Alexander Page,Jr. is the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor of Physics at Princeton University. He is an expert in observational cosmology and one of the original co-investigators for the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) project that made precise observations of the electromagnetic radiation from the Big Bang,known as cosmic background radiation.
The Gruber Prize in Cosmology,established in 2000,is one of three prestigious international awards worth US$500,000 awarded by the Gruber Foundation,a non-profit organization based at Yale University in New Haven,Connecticut.
Matias Zaldarriaga is a theoretical physicist best known for his work on cosmology. He has made significant contributions toward understanding both astrophysical phenomena and fundamental physics,most notably through his research on modeling the early universe and analyzing statistical properties of cosmic microwave background data. Zaldarriaga grew up in Buenos Aires,Argentina and received his undergraduate degree from the University of Buenos Aires in 1994. He received his PhD in 1998 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton,NJ. Zaldarriaga was a faculty member at New York University and Harvard University,where he received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2006. He is currently a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study,where he has been a faculty member since 2009.
UrošSeljak is a Slovenian cosmologist and a professor of astronomy and physics at University of California,Berkeley. He is particularly well-known for his research in cosmology and approximate Bayesian statistical methods.
Marc Kamionkowski is an American theoretical physicist and currently the William R. Kenan,Jr. Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Johns Hopkins University. His research interests include particle physics,dark matter,inflation,the cosmic microwave background and gravitational waves.
Licia Verde is an Italian cosmologist and theoretical physicist and currently ICREA Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Barcelona. Her research interests include large-scale structure,dark matter,dark energy,inflation and the cosmic microwave background.
Michele Limon is an Italian research scientist at the University of Pennsylvania. Limon studied physics at the Universitàdegli Studi di Milano in Milan,Italy and completed his post-doctoral work at the University of California,Berkeley. He has been conducting research for more than 30 years and has experience in the design of ground,balloon and space-based instrumentation. His academic specialties include Astrophysics,Cosmology,Instrumentation Development,and Cryogenics.
Hiranya Vajramani Peiris is a British astrophysicist at University College London and Stockholm University,best known for her work on the cosmic microwave background radiation. She was one of 27 scientists who received the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics in 2018 for their "detailed maps of the early universe."
Joanna Dunkley is a British astrophysicist and Professor of Physics at Princeton University. She works on the origin of the Universe and the Cosmic microwave background (CMB) using the Atacama Cosmology Telescope,the Simons Observatory and the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST).
Gary F. Hinshaw is a cosmologist and physics professor at the University of British Columbia. Hinshaw worked on the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) whose observations of Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) have provided significant insights into cosmology. He holds both US and Canadian citizenship.
Norman C. Jarosik is a US astrophysicist. He has worked on the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) whose observations of Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR) have provided significant insights into cosmology.