A black hole is a region of spacetime where gravity is so strong that nothing, including light and other electromagnetic waves, has enough energy to escape it. The theory of general relativity predicts that a sufficiently compact mass can deform spacetime to form a black hole. The boundary of no escape is called the event horizon. Although it has a great effect on the fate and circumstances of an object crossing it, it has no locally detectable features according to general relativity. In many ways, a black hole acts like an ideal black body, as it reflects no light. Moreover, quantum field theory in curved spacetime predicts that event horizons emit Hawking radiation, with the same spectrum as a black body of a temperature inversely proportional to its mass. This temperature is of the order of billionths of a kelvin for stellar black holes, making it essentially impossible to observe directly.
Kip Stephen Thorne is an American theoretical physicist known for his contributions in gravitational physics and astrophysics.
Martin John Rees, Baron Rees of Ludlow, is a British cosmologist and astrophysicist. He is the fifteenth Astronomer Royal, appointed in 1995, and was Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, from 2004 to 2012 and President of the Royal Society between 2005 and 2010.
Cumrun Vafa is an Iranian-American theoretical physicist and the Hollis Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy at Harvard University.
Robertus Henricus "Robbert" Dijkgraaf FRSE is a Dutch theoretical physicist, mathematician and string theorist, and the current Minister of Education, Culture and Science in the Netherlands. From July 2012 until his inauguration as minister in January 2022, he had been the director and Leon Levy professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, and a tenured professor at the University of Amsterdam.
The Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA), previously known as the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, is an astrophysics research institute jointly operated by the Harvard College Observatory and Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. Founded in 1973 and headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, the CfA leads a broad program of research in astronomy, astrophysics, Earth and space sciences, as well as science education. The CfA either leads or participates in the development and operations of more than fifteen ground- and space-based astronomical research observatories across the electromagnetic spectrum, including the forthcoming Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) and the Chandra X-ray Observatory, one of NASA's Great Observatories.
Bernard J. Carr is a British professor of mathematics and astronomy at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL).
Robert M. Wald is an American theoretical physicist and professor at the University of Chicago. He studies general relativity, black holes, and quantum gravity and has written textbooks on these subjects.
Eric J. Chaisson is an American astrophysicist known for his research, teaching, and writing on the interdisciplinary science of cosmic evolution. He is a member of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, teaches natural science at Harvard University and is an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Edward Seidel is an American academic administrator and scientist serving as the president of the University of Wyoming since July 1, 2020. He previously served as the Vice President for Economic Development and Innovation for the University of Illinois System, as well as a Founder Professor in the Department of Physics and a professor in the Department of Astronomy at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He was the director of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at Illinois from 2014 to 2017.
Reinhard Genzel is a German astrophysicist, co-director of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, a professor at LMU and an emeritus professor at the University of California, Berkeley. He was awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics "for the discovery of a supermassive compact object at the centre of our galaxy", which he shared with Andrea Ghez and Roger Penrose. In a 2021 interview given to Federal University of Pará in Brazil, Genzel recalls his journey as a physicist; the influence of his father, Ludwig Genzel; his experiences working with Charles H. Townes; and more.
Stephen William Hawking was an English theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author who was director of research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology at the University of Cambridge. Between 1979 and 2009, he was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, widely viewed as one of the most prestigious academic posts in the world.
Charles David Bailyn is the A. Bartlett Giamatti Professor of Astronomy and Physics at Yale University and inaugural dean of faculty at Yale-NUS College.
Sabrina Gonzalez Pasterski is an American theoretical physicist from Chicago who studies high energy physics. She describes herself as "a proud first-generation Cuban-American and Chicago Public Schools alumna". She completed her undergraduate studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) at age 19, earned her PhD from Harvard University at 25 and was a PCTS Postdoctoral Fellow at Princeton University before joining the faculty of the Perimeter Institute at age 27. According to Google Trends, Pasterski was the #3 Trending Scientist for all of 2017. In 2015, she was named to the Forbes 30 under 30 Science list, named a Forbes 30 under 30 All Star in 2017, and returned as a judge in 2018 as part of Forbes' first ever all-female Science category judging panel.
Jedidah C. Isler is an American astrophysicist, educator, and an active advocate for diversity in STEM. She became the first African-American woman to complete her PhD in astrophysics at Yale in 2014. She is currently an assistant professor of astrophysics at Dartmouth College. Her research explores the physics of blazars and examines the jet streams emanating from them. In November 2020, Isler was named a member of Joe Biden's presidential transition Agency Review Team to support transition efforts related to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
The John Templeton Foundation is a philanthropic organization that reflects the ideas of its founder, John Templeton, who became wealthy via a career as a contrarian investor, and wanted to support progress in religious and spiritual knowledge, especially at the intersection of religion and science. He also sought to fund research on methods to promote and develop moral character, intelligence, and creativity in people, and to promote free markets. In 2008, the foundation was awarded the National Humanities Medal. In 2016, Inside Philanthropy called it "the oddest—or most interesting—big foundation around."
Sheperd "Shep" S. Doeleman is an American astrophysicist. His research focuses on super massive black holes with sufficient resolution to directly observe the event horizon. He is a senior research fellow at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian and the Founding Director of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) project. He led the international team of researchers that produced the first directly observed image of a black hole.
Karan Jani is an Indian astrophysicist working on black holes, gravitational waves, and testing Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. He is currently an assistant professor of physics and astronomy at Vanderbilt University, and holds the endowed position of Cornelius Vanderbilt Dean’s Faculty Fellow. He has worked at the LIGO Livingston Observatory in the US, the Albert Einstein Institute in Germany, the Georgia Institute of Technology, and the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Canada. He is a member of the Indian Initiative in Gravitational-wave Observations effort to build a gravitational wave detector LIGO in India.
Fabio Pacucci is an Italian theoretical astrophysicist and science educator, currently at Harvard University and at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. He is widely known for his contributions to the study of black holes, in particular the first population of black holes formed in the Universe and high redshift quasars. He discovered the only two candidate direct collapse black holes known so far, and he was in the team that discovered the farthest lensed quasar known. Pacucci is also a science educator, engaged in public talks on astronomy and science in general. Since 2018 he is a collaborator of TED in developing educational videos about science. The four videos released so far were watched by millions of people worldwide and translated into 25 languages.
Selma de Mink is a Dutch astrophysicist specializing in evolution of stars, stellar binary systems and compact objects, including black holes. She is a scientific director at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garching near Munich, Germany.
