David Gerdes

Last updated
David Gerdes
Born1964 (age 59–60) [1]
Worcester, Massachusetts
NationalityAmerican
Occupation(s)University professor, astrophysicist
Education
Scientific career
Fields Physics, Astronomy
Institutions
Thesis Search for Wprime to e-nu and Wprime to mu-nu in pbar-p collisions at sqrt(s) = 1.8 TeV.  (1992)
Doctoral advisor Melvyn Shochet
Website www-personal.umich.edu/~gerdes/

David Gerdes (born 1964) is an American astrophysicist, professor, and administrator at the University of Michigan. He is known for his research on trans-Neptunian objects, particularly for his discovery of the dwarf planet, 2014 UZ224.

Contents

Education

Gerdes is a native of Hudson, Ohio and graduated from Hudson High School in 1982. He completed his undergraduate education in physics at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota in 1986. From 1986 to 1987, he studied applied mathematics and theoretical physics at the University of Cambridge under a Churchill Scholarship. [2] From 1987 to 1992, he studied at the University of Chicago, eventually obtaining a PhD in physics. [3]

Career

Upon completing his Ph.D., Gerdes joined the University of Michigan Physics Department in 1992 as a postdoctoral research fellow, working on the Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF) experiment. From 1996 to 1998, he was an assistant professor of Physics and Astronomy at Johns Hopkins University. [3] He returned to the University of Michigan Physics Department as a faculty member in 1998, and was promoted to professor in 2008. Since 2019 he has served as the department chair.

Johns Hopkins University

At Johns Hopkins University, Gerdes contributed to early studies of the top quark and to new particle searches with the Collider Detector at Fermilab. He received an Outstanding Junior Investigator Award from the United States Department of Energy and a CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation.

University of Michigan

In 1994, Gerdes and his collaborators on the Collider Detector at Fermilab experiment made the first observations of the top quark subatomic particle. [4]

Using data collected from the Dark Energy Survey between 2013 and 2018, Gerdes led a team of physicists and students at the University of Michigan which discovered hundreds of new object in the Kuiper Belt, including a previously unknown dwarf planet. [5] The dwarf planet was known informally as DeeDee until it was given its official designation of 2014 UZ224. [6] Gerdes helped to develop the camera used to make the discovery, although it was originally intended to create a map of distant galaxies. [7]

Gerdes is currently involved in efforts to locate a theorized ninth planet in the solar system. He expressed hope that the planet may have been captured in the same set of astronomical images that 2014 UZ224 was found in, and stated that he was "... excited about our chances of finding it." [7] In 2021, Gerdes and graduate student Kevin Napier published a paper [8] claiming that the clustering of extreme trans-Neptunian Objects, a key part of the evidence for Planet Nine, is simply an observational artifact and is not statistically significant.

Awards and distinctions

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Leon M. Lederman</span> American mathematician and physicist (1922–2018)

Leon Max Lederman was an American experimental physicist who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1988, along with Melvin Schwartz and Jack Steinberger, for research on neutrinos. He also received the Wolf Prize in Physics in 1982, along with Martin Lewis Perl, for research on quarks and leptons. Lederman was director emeritus of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in Batavia, Illinois. He founded the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, in Aurora, Illinois in 1986, where he was resident scholar emeritus from 2012 until his death in 2018.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Collider Detector at Fermilab</span> American experimental physics device (1985–2011)

The Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF) experimental collaboration studies high energy particle collisions from the Tevatron, the world's former highest-energy particle accelerator. The goal is to discover the identity and properties of the particles that make up the universe and to understand the forces and interactions between those particles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">DØ experiment</span> Particle physics research project (1983–2011)

The DØ experiment was a worldwide collaboration of scientists conducting research on the fundamental nature of matter. DØ was one of two major experiments located at the Tevatron Collider at Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois. The Tevatron was the world's highest-energy accelerator from 1983 until 2009, when its energy was surpassed by the Large Hadron Collider. The DØ experiment stopped taking data in 2011, when the Tevatron shut down, but data analysis is still ongoing. The DØ detector is preserved in Fermilab's DØ Assembly Building as part of a historical exhibit for public tours.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">QuarkNet</span> Teacher professional development in sciences

QuarkNet is a long-term, research-based teacher professional development program in the United States jointly funded by the National Science Foundation and the US Department of Energy. Since 1999, QuarkNet has established centers at universities and national laboratories conducting research in particle physics across the United States, and has been bringing such physics to high school classrooms. QuarkNet programs are described in the National Research Council National Science Education Standards report (1995) and support the Next Generation Science Standards (2013).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nigel Lockyer</span> Particle physicist, Fermilab director

Nigel Stuart Lockyer is a British-American experimental particle physicist. He is the current director of the Cornell Laboratory for Accelerator-based ScienceS and Education (CLASSE) as of May 1, 2023. He was the Director of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), in Batavia, Illinois, the leading particle physics laboratory in the United States, from September 2013 to April 2022.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Don Lincoln</span> American physicist

Don Lincoln is an American physicist, author, host of the YouTube channel Fermilab, and science communicator. He conducts research in particle physics at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, and was an adjunct professor of physics at the University of Notre Dame, although he is no longer affiliated with the university. He received a Ph.D. in experimental particle physics from Rice University in 1994. In 1995, he was a co-discoverer of the top quark. He has co-authored hundreds of research papers, and more recently, was a member of the team that discovered the Higgs boson in 2012.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Soo-Bong Kim</span> South Korean physicist (born 1960)

Soo-Bong Kim is a South Korean physicist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tara Shears</span> Professor of Physics

Tara Georgina Shears is a Professor of Physics at the University of Liverpool.

<span class="nowrap">2014 UZ<sub>224</sub></span> Trans-Neptunian object @ 89AU

2014 UZ224 is a trans-Neptunian object and possible dwarf planet orbiting in the scattered disc of the outermost Solar System. As of 2021, it is approximately 89.7 AU (13.42 billion km) from the Sun, and will slowly decrease in distance until it reaches its perihelion of 38 AU in 2142. The discoverers have nicknamed it "DeeDee" for "Distant Dwarf".

Kenneth Arthur Bloom is an American particle physicist. He is a full professor at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln and an Elected Fellow of the American Physical Society.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yaşar Önel</span> Turkish-born physicist

Yaşar Önel is a Turkish-born physicist who holds Swiss and American citizenship. He received his Ph.D. in Physics from London University in 1975. He worked at the Queen Mary University of London in the United Kingdom, and Neuchatel and Geneva Universities in Switzerland before joining the University of Texas at Austin in 1986. Then, he moved to the University of Iowa in 1988. He is a tenured faculty professor. of Physics at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, IA, USA.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wendy Taylor (physicist)</span> Experimental particle physicist

Wendy Taylor is an Experimental Particle Physicist at York University and a former Canada Research Chair. She is the lead for York University's ATLAS experiment group at CERN.

Paul Dutton Grannis is an American physicist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Daniela Bortoletto</span> Italian physicist

Daniela Bortoletto is an Italian-British high energy physicist, head of Particle Physics at the University of Oxford and Nicholas Kurti Senior Research Fellow in Physics at Brasenose College, University of Oxford. She works in silicon detector development and was a co-discoverer of both the Higgs boson and the top quark.

Paraskevas Andreas Sphicas is a particle physicist who focuses on studies of High energy collisions in the Large Hadron Collider through which he explores supersymmetry and the mechanism of spontaneous symmetry breaking. He is a senior scientist at CERN and professor of physics at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2019.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Brad Cox (physicist)</span> American physicist

Bradley Cox is an American physicist, academic and researcher. He is a Professor of Physics and the founder of the High Energy Physics Group at the University of Virginia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kevin T. Pitts</span> American physicist and professor

Kevin T. Pitts is an American high energy particle physicist. In addition to his faculty appointment at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, in 2021 he was appointed chief research officer at Fermilab National Accelerator Laboratory. His research interests have included the CDF experiment and the Muon g-2 experiment at Fermilab.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sheldon Stone</span> American particle physicist (1946–2021)

Sheldon Leslie Stone was a distinguished professor of physics at Syracuse University. He is best known for his work in experimental elementary particle physics, the Large Hadron Collider beauty experiment (LHCb), and B decays. He made significant contributions in the areas of data analysis, LHCb detector design and construction, and phenomenology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Florencia Canelli</span> A short description. See Wikipedia:Short description for details.

Florencia Canelli is since 2021 the appointed Swiss scientific delegate to the CERN council, the supreme decision-making authority of the CERN Organization. From 2021-2024, she was appointed chair of the IUPAP division of particles and field (C11). From 2021-2023, she was co-coordinator of the physics program of the CMS collaboration, a CERN experiment with over 3000 physicists. In 2010, Canelli was awarded the IUPAP Young scientist prize, an international prize awarded to one experimental and one theoretical physicist per year, for "her pioneering contribution to the identification and precision measurements of rare phenomenon through the use of advanced analysis techniques to separate very small signals from large background processes at the Tevatron collider." She has been an author on four multi-purpose collider experiments, namely the CMS experiment and ATLAS experiment at the CERN LHC, and the CDF experiment and D0 experiment at the Fermilab Tevatron. She is currently a full professor at the University of Zurich, Physics Institute, specializing in particle physics.

Christopher Scott Hill is an American particle physicist and Professor of Physics at The Ohio State University. He is known for his contributions to the study of the top quark and for co-founding the milliQan Experiment at the Large Hadron Collider.

References

  1. ↑ Allen, Robert (2017-08-16). "Telescope chain spanning U.S. will create unprecedented eclipse video". Detroit Free Press . Retrieved 2018-05-06.
  2. ↑ "The Winston Churchill Foundation of the United States". Archived from the original on 2016-10-14. Retrieved 2018-05-07.
  3. 1 2 "Gerdes, David W." Retrieved 2018-05-07.
  4. ↑ Venere, Emil (1998-01-26). "The Johns Hopkins Gazette" . Retrieved 2018-05-07.
  5. ↑ Meer, Jennifer (2016-10-13). "University astronomy professor discovers new dwarf planet". The Michigan Daily . Retrieved 2018-05-06.
  6. ↑ "Meet 'DeeDee,' a distant, dim member of our solar system". National Radio Astronomy Observatory. 2017-04-12. Retrieved 2018-05-04.
  7. 1 2 Palca, Joe (2016-10-11). "A Friend For Pluto: Astronomers Find New Dwarf Planet In Our Solar System". NPR . Retrieved 2018-05-04.
  8. ↑ O'Callaghan, Jonathan (2021-02-19). "No sign of Planet Nine? Trail runs cold for hypothetical world" . Nature. doi:10.1038/d41586-021-00456-7. PMID   33608686. S2CID   231970682 . Retrieved 2021-05-04.
  9. ↑ ""IAU Minor Planet Center"". 2024-03-19. Retrieved 2024-08-19.
  10. ↑ "APS Fellow Archive" . Retrieved 2018-05-07.
  11. ↑ "Provost's Teaching Innovation Prize" . Retrieved 2018-05-07.
  12. ↑ "Regents approve Thurnau professors". 2007-02-19. Retrieved 2022-05-04.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.