Robert Kirshner Biography

Robert Kirshner was born in 1949 and is currently alive. He is a professor at Harvard's College of Astronomy and Clowes Professor of Science at Harvard. At the age of 21 he graduated from Harvard and then studied at Caltech where he received a Ph.D. in Astronomy. He then went on to do post doctoral work at the Kitt Peak ?National Observatory. Kirshner served on several scientific boards and was chairman of the Harvard Astronomy Department for 7 years. In the scientific world he is best known for his work with deep sky objects, mostly supernovae and their remnants. He has written over 200 research papers on these topics and his most famous discovery came about when he was on the "High-Z Supernova Team." Kirshner and his team were studying a large collection of supernovas when they came to the conclusion that the Universe is actually expanding at an accelerating rate, not a decelerating one as would be expected. This discovery implies the existence of dark matter, which until then had almost no evidence in support of it. This discovery was dubbed tbhe science breakthrough of the year for 1998 by Science Magazine. The team also received the Gruber Prize for Cosmology in 2007. Along with this discovery he has also served as president of the American Astronomical Society for 2 years and was awarded the Distinguished Alumni Award in 2004 by Caltech. He has also written a book called "The Extravagant Universe" and is currently teaching Science A-35 at Harvard for undergraduates.