Robert Kirshner

Kirshner is the Clowes Professor of Science at Harvard University. This year, he is on leave at the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation in Palo Alto, heading their science program. He has been a leader in the use of supernova explosions to chart the expansion history of the universe, winning the 2015 Wolf Prize in Physics for this work. At Harvard, he served as Master of Quincy House, an undergraduate residential community, Astronomy Department chair, and taught a large undergraduate course for students who were not planning to take any other science courses. A frequent public speaker on science, he is also author of the popular-audience book The Extravagant Universe: Exploding Stars, Dark Energy, and the Accelerating Universe, which is available in English, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, and Czech.