Robert P. Kirshner

Robert P. Kirshner is an astronomer and the Executive Director of the TMT International Observatory, striving to build the Thirty Meter Telescope. He is also Research Professor of Astrophysics at Caltech and Clowes Professor of Science emeritus at Harvard. He has worked in several areas including the physics of supernovae, supernova remnants, the large-scale structure of the cosmos, and the use of supernovae to measure the expansion history of the universe.

Kirshner received his A.B. magna cum laude in Astronomy from Harvard College in 1970, where he also won a Bowdoin Prize for Useful and Polite Literature. He earned his Ph.D., also in Astronomy, from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in 1975. Kirshner then worked as a postdoc at the Kitt Peak National Observatory, before joining the faculty at the University of Michigan, where he rose to become Professor and Chairman of the Astronomy Department, helped to build the 2.4 meter Hiltner Telescope, received an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, and won Michigan’s Henry Russel Award.

In 1985, he moved to the Harvard Astronomy Department as Professor of Astronomy (1985–2016), where he served as Chairman of the Department from 1990-1997 and as the head of the Optical and Infrared Division of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian from 1997-2003. He was appointed Clowes Professor of Science in 2001, Master of Quincy House, one of Harvard’s undergraduate residences, from 2001-2007 and Harvard College Professor (2004–2009). He helped Harvard join the Magellan Observatory in Chile and the Giant Magellan Telescope project.

In July, 2015 he was appointed Chief Program Officer for Science at the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, where he led the team responsible for distributing more than $100 million per year for research and technology that enables fundamental scientific discoveries. In May of 2022, Kirshner joined the Thirty Meter International Observatory as Executive Director, succeeding Ed Stone.

In 2004, he received the Caltech Distinguished Alumni Award. In 2010, he received an honorary Doctor of Science from the University of Chicago. In 2011, he won the Dannie Heineman Prize for Astrophysics from the American Institute of Physics. In 2012, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 2014, he won the James Craig Watson Medal for service to astronomy from the National Academy of Sciences and shared in the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics with the High-Z Team. In 2015, he shared the Wolf Prize in Physics with B.J. Bjorken. In 2019, he received an honorary Doctor of Science from Ohio University. He is a popular writer and speaker in the United States and abroad, represented by Jodi Solomon Speakers. He has been frequently interviewed by mainstream journalists and the science press and is often quoted in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Nature, and Science magazine. He has written for the general public in National Geographic, Sky & Telescope, Natural History, and Scientific American. His book, The Extravagant Universe: Exploding Stars, Dark Energy, and the Accelerating Cosmos is available from Princeton University Press and has been translated into 5 languages.

Kirshner’s scientific service includes board memberships for the Gemini International Telescope, the AUI Board for the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, the Associated Universities for Research in Astronomy, the National Research Council Committee on Astronomy and Astrophysics, the NASA Advisory Committee Science Subcommittee, and the Math and Physical Sciences Advisory Committee for the National Science Foundation. Kirshner was a panelist for the 2000 and 2010 Decadal Reviews of Astronomy. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Fellow of the American Physical Society and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and an Inaugural Fellow of the American Astronomical Society, where he served as President from 20024-2006.