Robert Kirshner

Author and Astronomist

Robert Kirshner is Professor of Astronomy at Harvard University and an Associate Director of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. He graduated from Harvard College in 1970 and received a Ph.D. in astronomy at Caltech four years later. After postdoctoral work at Kitt Peak National Observatory in Tucson, he joined the faculty at the University of Michigan for 9 years before moving to the Harvard Astronomy Department in 1986. He served as Chairman of the department from 1990-1997.

Professor Kirshner is an author of 200 research papers dealing with supernovae, the large-scale distribution of galaxies, and the size and shape of the Universe. His recent work on the acceleration of the Universe was dubbed the "Science Breakthrough of the Year” by Science Magazine. He was featured prominently in the recent (and highly acclaimed) PBS Nova series Origins.

Kirshner is a frequent public lecturer on science, including the 1997 Princeton University lectures, the 1998 Seyfert Lecture at Vanderbilt University and a featured talk to the National Science Teachers Association at their national meeting in 1999. He is also the teacher of Science A-35, a core curriculum course for 250 Harvard undergraduates entitled "Matter in the Universe." The vivid (and slightly hazardous) demonstrations in Science A-35 led to Kirshner's being featured in Boston Magazine in their October 1998 article on "Nutty Professors". Kirshner has made a series of video tapes on "Cosmic Questions" for The Teaching Company which are widely available.Of The Extravagant Universe,

Princeton’sBohdan Paczynski said “This is a wonderful book on one of the hottest topics in science, written by one of the main contributors to the breakthrough. It presents a history of modern cosmology written in a very lively style with amusing personal stories that make the reading easy and entertaining"