Adam Riess

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Adam Riess
Nobel Prize 2011-Press Conference KVA-DSC 7764.jpg
Riess in 2011
Born
Adam Guy Riess

(1969-12-16) December 16, 1969 (age 54)
Washington, D.C., U.S.
Alma mater Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
Harvard University
Known for Accelerating universe / dark energy, Hubble constant
SpouseNancy Joy Schondorf (m. 1998)
Awards Robert J. Trumpler Award (1999) [1]
Helen B. Warner Prize for Astronomy (2002)
Sackler Prize for Physics (2004) [1]
Shaw Prize in Astronomy (2006)
Nobel Prize in Physics (2011)
Albert Einstein Medal (2011)
Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics (2015)
Scientific career
Fields Physics
Institutions
Thesis Type Ia Supernova Multicolor Light Curve Shapes  (1996)
Doctoral advisor Robert Kirshner, William H. Press

Adam Guy Riess (born December 16, 1969) is an American astrophysicist and Bloomberg Distinguished Professor at Johns Hopkins University and the Space Telescope Science Institute. He is known for his research in using supernovae as cosmological probes. Riess shared both the 2006 Shaw Prize in Astronomy and the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics with Saul Perlmutter and Brian P. Schmidt for providing evidence that the expansion of the universe is accelerating.

Contents

Family

Riess was born in Washington, D.C., one of three children. [2] [3] He grew up in Warren, New Jersey, where his father (Naval engineer Michael Riess) owned a frozen-foods distribution company, Bistro International, and his mother (Doris Riess) worked as a clinical psychologist. [4] Michael Riess (1931–2007) immigrated to the United States with his parents (journalist, war correspondent and author Curt Martin Riess and Ilse Posnansky) [5] from Germany on the ship SS Europa (1928) in 1936. [6] Riess is by birth Jewish. [7] Adam Riess has two sisters – Gail Saltz, a psychiatrist, and Holly Hagerman, an artist. Riess married Nancy Joy Schondorf in 1998.

Education

He attended Watchung Hills Regional High School, graduating in the class of 1988. [8] He also attended the prestigious New Jersey Governor's School in the Sciences in 1987. Riess then graduated Phi Beta Kappa from The Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1992 where he was a member of the Phi Delta Theta fraternity. He received his PhD from Harvard University in 1996; it resulted in measurements of over twenty new Type Ia supernovae and a method to utilize Type Ia supernovae as accurate distance indicators by correcting for intervening dust and intrinsic inhomogeneities. Riess's PhD thesis was supervised by Robert Kirshner and William H. Press and won the Robert J. Trumpler Award in 1999 for PhD theses of unusual importance to astronomy. [9]

Research

Riess was a Miller Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1996 through 1999, during which period his first seminal paper on the discovery of an accelerating universe was published. [10] In 1999, he moved to the Space Telescope Science Institute and took up a position at Johns Hopkins University in 2006. He also sits on the selection committee for the Astronomy award given under the auspices of the Shaw Prize. In July 2016, Riess was named a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor at Johns Hopkins University for his accomplishments as an interdisciplinary researcher and excellence in teaching the next generation of scholars. [10] The Bloomberg Distinguished Professorships were established in 2013 by a gift from Michael Bloomberg. [11]

Riess jointly led the study with Brian Schmidt in 1998 for the High-z Supernova Search Team which first reported evidence that the universe's expansion rate is accelerating through monitoring of Type Ia supernovae. The team's observations were contrary to the existing theory that the expansion of the universe was slowing down; instead, by monitoring the color shifts in the light from supernovae from Earth, they discovered that these billion-year old novae were still accelerating. [12] This result was also found nearly simultaneously by the Supernova Cosmology Project, led by Saul Perlmutter. [12] The corroborating evidence between the two competing studies led to the acceptance of the accelerating universe theory, and initiated new research to understand the nature of the universe, such as the existence of dark energy. [12] The discovery of the accelerating universe was named 'Breakthrough of the Year' by Science magazine in 1998, [13] and Riess was jointly awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics along with Schmidt and Perlmutter for their groundbreaking work. [12]

From 2002 to 2007 Riess led the Higher-Z SN Team which used the Hubble Space Telescope to find dozens of type Ia supernovae at z>1, first demonstrating that the expansion of the Universe was decelerating before it began accelerating and ruling out astrophysical contamination of SN Ia. [14]

Riess is also known for his efforts to measure the local value of the Hubble constant while leading the SH0ES Team since 2005 with measurements that approach 1% precision and which indicate a discrepancy with the model-based prediction from the CMB, a problem widely known in cosmology as the Hubble tension. [15] [16]

Awards and honors

Saul Perlmutter, Riess, and Brian P. Schmidt being awarded the 2006 Shaw Prize in Astronomy. The trio would later be awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics. Shaw2006astro.jpg
Saul Perlmutter, Riess, and Brian P. Schmidt being awarded the 2006 Shaw Prize in Astronomy. The trio would later be awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Riess received the Astronomical Society of the Pacific's Robert J. Trumpler Award in 1999 and Harvard University's Bok Prize in 2001. He won the American Astronomical Society's Helen B. Warner Prize in 2003 and the Raymond and Beverly Sackler Prize in Physics in 2004 for the discovery of cosmic acceleration. [17]

In 2006, he shared the $1 million Shaw Prize in Astronomy with Saul Perlmutter and Brian P. Schmidt for contributions to the discovery of the acceleration of the universe. [18]

Schmidt and all the members of the High-Z Team (as defined by the co-authors of Riess et al. 1998) shared the 2007 Gruber Cosmology Prize, a $500,000 award, with the Supernova Cosmology Project (the set defined by the co-authors of Perlmutter et al. 1999) for their discovery of the accelerating expansion of the universe. Riess was the winner of MacArthur "Genius" Grant in 2008. He was also elected in 2009 to the National Academy of Sciences. [19]

Along with Perlmutter and Schmidt, he was awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics for his contributions to the discovery of the acceleration of the expansion of the universe. [18]

Riess, along with Brian P. Schmidt, and the High-Z Supernova Search Team shared in the 2015 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics. [20]

In 2012, Riess received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement. [21]

In 2020, Riess was made fellow of the American Astronomical Society. [22]

Media appearances

Riess participated on the NPR radio quiz program Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! in 2011. [23]

Publications

Riess has more than 123,000 citations in Google Scholar and an h-index of 124. His most cited work, "Observational evidence from supernovae for an accelerating universe and a cosmological constant," has been cited over 25,000 times. [24] Riess has been among the top 1% most cited in the world for subject field and year of publication in the Thomson Reuters Highly Cited Researchers reports for multiple years, including 2014-2016 and 2020-2023. [25] [26]

Highly cited articles (more than 1900 citations)

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cosmological constant</span> Value representing energy density of space

In cosmology, the cosmological constant, alternatively called Einstein's cosmological constant, is a coefficient that Albert Einstein initially added to his field equations of general relativity. He later removed it; however, much later it was revived to express the energy density of space, or vacuum energy, that arises in quantum mechanics. It is closely associated with the concept of dark energy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Accelerating expansion of the universe</span> Cosmological phenomenon

Observations show that the expansion of the universe is accelerating, such that the velocity at which a distant galaxy recedes from the observer is continuously increasing with time. The accelerated expansion of the universe was discovered in 1998 by two independent projects, the Supernova Cosmology Project and the High-Z Supernova Search Team, which used distant type Ia supernovae to measure the acceleration. The idea was that as type Ia supernovae have almost the same intrinsic brightness, and since objects that are further away appear dimmer, the observed brightness of these supernovae can be used to measure the distance to them. The distance can then be compared to the supernovae's cosmological redshift, which measures how much the universe has expanded since the supernova occurred; the Hubble law established that the further away an object is, the faster it is receding. The unexpected result was that objects in the universe are moving away from one another at an accelerating rate. Cosmologists at the time expected that recession velocity would always be decelerating, due to the gravitational attraction of the matter in the universe. Three members of these two groups have subsequently been awarded Nobel Prizes for their discovery. Confirmatory evidence has been found in baryon acoustic oscillations, and in analyses of the clustering of galaxies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hubble's law</span> Observation in physical cosmology

Hubble's law, also known as the Hubble–Lemaître law, is the observation in physical cosmology that galaxies are moving away from Earth at speeds proportional to their distance. In other words, the farther they are, the faster they are moving away. For this purpose, the recessional velocity of a galaxy is typically determined by measuring redshift, a shift in the light it emits toward the red end of the visible light spectrum. The discovery of Hubble's law is attributed to work published by Edwin Hubble in 1929.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Saul Perlmutter</span> American astrophysicist and Nobel laureate (born 1959)

Saul Perlmutter is a U.S. astrophysicist, a professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, where he holds the Franklin W. and Karen Weber Dabby Chair, and head of the International Supernova Cosmology Project at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He is a member of both the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and the American Philosophical Society, and was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2003. He is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Perlmutter shared the 2006 Shaw Prize in Astronomy, the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics, and the 2015 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics with Brian P. Schmidt and Adam Riess for providing evidence that the expansion of the universe is accelerating. Since 2021, he has been a member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Kirshner</span> American astronomer

Robert P. Kirshner is an American astronomer, Chief Program Officer for Science for the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, and the Clownes Research Professor of Science at Harvard University. Kirshner has worked in several areas of astronomy including the physics of supernovae, supernova remnants, the large-scale structure of the cosmos, and the use of supernovae to measure the expansion of the universe.

The Supernova Cosmology Project is one of two research teams that determined the likelihood of an accelerating universe and therefore a positive cosmological constant, using data from the redshift of Type Ia supernovae. The project is headed by Saul Perlmutter at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, with members from Australia, Chile, France, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alex Filippenko</span> American astrophysicist

Alexei Vladimir "Alex" Filippenko is an American astrophysicist and professor of astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley. Filippenko graduated from Dos Pueblos High School in Goleta, California. He received a Bachelor of Arts in physics from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1979 and a Ph.D. in astronomy from the California Institute of Technology in 1984, where he was a Hertz Foundation Fellow. He was a postdoctoral Miller Fellow at Berkeley from 1984 to 1986 and was appointed to Berkeley's faculty in 1986. In 1996 and 2005, he was a Miller Research Professor, and he is currently a Senior Miller Fellow. His research focuses on supernovae and active galaxies at optical, ultraviolet, and near-infrared wavelengths, as well as on black holes, gamma-ray bursts, and the expansion of the Universe.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">High-Z Supernova Search Team</span> International cosmology research group (1994–2002)

The High-Z Supernova Search Team was an international cosmology collaboration which used Type Ia supernovae to chart the expansion of the universe. The team was formed in 1994 by Brian P. Schmidt, then a post-doctoral research associate at Harvard University, and Nicholas B. Suntzeff, a staff astronomer at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) in Chile. The original team submitted a proposal on September 29, 1994 called A Pilot Project to Search for Distant Type Ia Supernova to the CTIO. The team on the first observing proposal comprised: Nicholas Suntzeff (PI); Brian Schmidt (Co-I); R. Chris Smith, Robert Schommer, Mark M. Phillips, Mario Hamuy, Roberto Aviles, Jose Maza, Adam Riess, Robert Kirshner, Jason Spiromilio, and Bruno Leibundgut. The project was awarded four nights of telescope time on the CTIO Víctor M. Blanco Telescope on the nights of February 25, 1995, and March 6, 24, and 29, 1995. The pilot project led to the discovery of supernova SN1995Y. In 1995, the HZT elected Brian P. Schmidt of the Mount Stromlo Observatory which is part of the Australian National University to manage the team.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Brian Schmidt</span> American-born Australian astrophysicist and Nobel Laureate

Brian Paul Schmidt is an American Australian astrophysicist at the Australian National University's Mount Stromlo Observatory and Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics. He was the Vice-Chancellor of the Australian National University (ANU) from January 2016 to January 2024. He is known for his research in using supernovae as cosmological probes. He previously held a Federation Fellowship and a Laureate Fellowship from the Australian Research Council, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2012. Schmidt shared both the 2006 Shaw Prize in Astronomy and the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics with Saul Perlmutter and Adam Riess for providing evidence that the expansion of the universe is accelerating.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nicholas B. Suntzeff</span> American astronomer and cosmologist

Nicholas B. Suntzeff is an American astronomer and cosmologist. He is a university distinguished professor and holds the Mitchell/Heep/Munnerlyn Chair of Observational Astronomy in the Department of Physics & Astronomy at Texas A&M University where he is director of the Astronomy Program. He is an observational astronomer specializing in cosmology, supernovae, stellar populations, and astronomical instrumentation. With Brian Schmidt he founded the High-z Supernova Search Team, which was honored with the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2011 to Schmidt and Adam Riess.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mark M. Phillips</span> American astronomer (born 1951)

Mark M. Phillips (born March 31, 1951) is an American astronomer who works on the observational studies of all classes of supernovae. He has worked on SN 1986G, SN 1987A, the Calán/Tololo Supernova Survey, the High-Z Supernova Search Team, and the Phillips relationship. This relationship has allowed the use of Type Ia supernovae as standard candles, leading to the precise measurements of the Hubble constant H0 and the deceleration parameter q0, the latter implying the existence of dark energy or a cosmological constant in the Universe.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Christopher Stubbs</span> American experimental physicist (b. 1958)

Christopher Stubbs is an experimental physicist on the faculty at Harvard University in both the Department of Physics and the Department of Astronomy. He is the Dean of Science at Harvard University and a former chair of Harvard's Department of Physics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dark energy</span> Energy driving the accelerated expansion of the universe

In physical cosmology and astronomy, dark energy is a proposed form of energy that affects the universe on the largest scales. Its primary effect is to drive the accelerating expansion of the universe. Assuming that the lambda-CDM model of cosmology is correct, dark energy dominates the universe, contributing 68% of the total energy in the present-day observable universe while dark matter and ordinary (baryonic) matter contribute 26% and 5%, respectively, and other components such as neutrinos and photons are nearly negligible. Dark energy's density is very low: 7×10−30 g/cm3, much less than the density of ordinary matter or dark matter within galaxies. However, it dominates the universe's mass–energy content because it is uniform across space.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mario Hamuy</span> Chilean astronomer

Mario Andrés Hamuy Wackenhut is a Chilean Astronomer and Professor of Astronomy at the University of Chile and Cerro Calan Observatory. He is well known for his observational work on all classes of supernovae, especially the use of Type Ia and Type II supernovae as measures of cosmic distance.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Calán/Tololo Survey</span>

The Calán/Tololo Supernova Survey was a supernova survey that ran from 1989 to 1995 at the University of Chile and the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory to measure a Hubble diagram out to redshifts of 0.1. It was founded by Mario Hamuy, José Maza Sancho, Mark M. Phillips, and Nicholas B. Suntzeff in 1989 out of discussions at the UC Santa Cruz meeting on supernovae on how to improve the Hubble diagram using Type Ia supernovae. It was also motivated by the suggestion of Allan Sandage to restart a supernova survey after the Sandage and Tammann survey failed due to poor quality photographic plates in 1986. The Survey built on the original supernova survey of Maza done at the f/3 Maksutov Camera at the Cerro Roble Observatory of the University of Chile between 1979 and 1984. The Survey used the CTIO Curtis Schmidt telescope with IIa-O photographic plates, each plate covering a field of 25 sq-deg on the sky. The plates were developed and sent to Santiago Chile the next morning and searched for supernovae at the Department of Astronomy at the University of Chile. Any supernova candidates were then observed the next night using the 0.9m telescope at CTIO with a CCD camera. This was one of the first studies done in astronomy where the telescope time was scheduled to observe objects not yet discovered.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pilar Ruiz-Lapuente</span> Spanish astronomer (born 1964)

Pilar Ruiz-Lapuente is an astrophysicist working as a professor at the University of Barcelona. Her work has included research on type Ia supernovae. In 2004, she led the team that searched for the companion star to the white dwarf that became supernova SN 1572, observed by Tycho Brahe, among others. Ruiz-Lapuente's research on supernovae contributed to the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the universe.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hubble bubble (astronomy)</span> Variation in the Hubble constant

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<i>The 4 Percent Universe</i> Book by Richard Panek

The 4 Percent Universe: Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and the Race to Discover the Rest of Reality is a nonfiction book by writer and professor Richard Panek and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt on January 10, 2011.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bruno Leibundgut</span> Swiss astronomer (born 1960)

Bruno Leibundgut is a Swiss astronomer born in Basel. His work focuses on supernovae and cosmology. He was a member of the High-z Supernova Search Team and participated in the planning, development and start of the operations of the Very Large Telescope.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peter Garnavich</span>

Peter M. Garnavich is a faculty member of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Notre Dame. His primary research area is the study of supernovae and their diversity. He has also studied gamma ray bursts and cataclysmic variable stars. Garnavich is a member of a supernova search team that contributed to the discovery of dark energy in 1998. At Notre Dame, Garnavich has developed and participated in collaborations using the Spitzer Space Telescope, the Large Binocular Telescope, the Hubble Space Telescope, and the Kepler Space Telescope. He was named a fellow of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) in 2024.

References

  1. 1 2 Jain, Chelsi. "Awards List extended using a reliable source".
  2. ↑ "WEDDINGS; Nancy Schondorf And Adam Riess". The New York Times . January 11, 1998.
  3. ↑ Wedding: Drs. Gail Michele Riess and Leonard Bruce Saltz. Nytimes.com (June 18, 1989). Retrieved on April 2, 2012.
  4. ↑ Chasing the Great Beyond. Jhu.edu (January 12, 1998). Retrieved on April 2, 2012.
  5. ↑ Saxon, Wolfgang (May 21, 1993). "Curt Riess, Author And Journalist, 90; Expert on Nazi Era". The New York Times.
  6. ↑ Obituary: Michael Riess. New York Times (October 11, 2007). Retrieved on April 2, 2012.
  7. ↑ "Jewish Insider's Daily Kickoff: December 15, 2017". Haaretz.
  8. ↑ Spivey, Mark. "Watchung Hills graduate shares Nobel Prize in physics", Daily Record (Morristown) , October 4, 2011. Accessed October 5, 2011. "Riess, who grew up in Warren, gave a shout-out to retired teacher Jeff Charney, saying his interest in science first was piqued at Watchung Hills."
  9. ↑ Panek, Richard (2011). The 4% Universe: Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and the Race to Discover the Rest of Reality. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. ISBN   978-0-618-98244-8., pg. 174
  10. 1 2 Messersmith, Julie. "Nobel laureate Adam Riess named 22nd Bloomberg Distinguished Professor at Johns Hopkins", JHU Hub, Baltimore, 8 July 2016. Retrieved on 13 July 2016.
  11. ↑ "Michael R. Bloomberg Commits $350 Million to Johns Hopkins for Transformational Academic Initiative 2013".
  12. 1 2 3 4 Palmer, Jason (October 4, 2011). "Nobel physics prize honours accelerating Universe find". BBC . Retrieved October 5, 2011.
  13. ↑ Bloom, Floyd E. (December 18, 1998). "Breakthroughs 1998". Science. 282 (5397): 2193. Bibcode:1998Sci...282.2193B. doi:10.1126/science.282.5397.2193. S2CID   220092189 . Retrieved November 27, 2020.
  14. ↑ Type Ia Supernova Discoveries at z > 1 from the Hubble Space Telescope
  15. ↑ A 2.4% Determination of the Local Value of the Hubble Constant
  16. ↑ A Comprehensive Measurement of the Local Value of the Hubble Constant with 1 km s-1 Mpc-1 Uncertainty from the Hubble Space Telescope and the SH0ES Team
  17. ↑ "Past Laureates of the Raymond and Beverly Sackler International Prize in Physics". Tel Aviv University. September 5, 2012. Retrieved May 28, 2023.
  18. 1 2 "Nobel physics prize honours accelerating Universe find". BBC News . October 4, 2011.
  19. ↑ Newsroom. National-Academies.org (April 28, 2009). Retrieved on April 2, 2012.
  20. ↑ "Breakthrough Prize – Fundamental Physics Breakthrough Prize Laureates – Adam Riess and the High-z Supernova Search Team". Breakthrough Prize. Retrieved May 28, 2023.
  21. ↑ "Golden Plate Awardees of the American Academy of Achievement". www.achievement.org. American Academy of Achievement.
  22. ↑ "Four Johns Hopkins faculty members named American Astronomical Society fellows". The Hub. Johns Hopkins University. March 4, 2020. Retrieved March 6, 2020.
  23. ↑ Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me! from NPR
  24. ↑ "Adam Riess". scholar.google.com. Retrieved May 19, 2021.
  25. ↑ "13 Johns Hopkins scientists among most cited researchers in the world". The Hub. November 18, 2016. Retrieved May 19, 2021.
  26. ↑ "Adam G. Riess". Web of Science Group. September 21, 2020. Retrieved May 19, 2021.
Awards and achievements
Preceded by Winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics
with Saul Perlmutter and Brian Schmidt
2011		Succeeded by
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