Tom Wagg | |
|---|---|
| Born | November 30, 1997 |
| Nationality | English |
| Alma mater | Harvard University |
| Occupation(s) | PhD Graduate, May 2025 University of Washington |
| Website | https://www.tomwagg.com/ |
Thomas James Wagg (born 30 November 1997) is an English astrophysicist, with interests in massive stars and gravitational waves. He has a PhD in Astronomy from the University of Washington. [1] He is believed to be the youngest person to have discovered a planet. [2] [3]
Wagg was born in Stoke-on-Trent, a green country-side city located in Staffordshire, England. He attended Newcastle-under-Lyme school, where he attained an A* in all 12 GCSE exams, including astronomy. [2] [4] While in high school, he completed a work experience program at Keele University on an exoplanet search project under Professor Coel Hellier. [4]
He graduated from Harvard College in 2020 with a bachelor’s degree in Physics and Astrophysics and a secondary in Computer Science with the distinction cum laude. While there, his research program spanned luminous red galaxies with Daniel Eisenstein and population genetics with Michael Desai, ultimately culminating in a senior thesis under Selma de Mink on the LISA mission’s ability to detect black hole-neutron star binaries. [5] As an undergraduate, he also served the Harvard Library Judaica Division, pioneering the Alma Booster Chrome Extension used by the department to streamline record-keeping. [6] [7]
In 2015, Tom discovered a planet during a work experience program for the astrophysics department of Keele University. [4] His work contributed to the Wide Angle Search for Planets (WASP), an international consortium of academic institutions that use transit photometry to detect exoplanets. [8] [2] On the third day of his internship, Tom noticed a small irregular dip in the light intensity of a star, a common sign that an orbiting planet is passing between a star and the observation point. In 2016, researchers from the University of Liege and University of Geneva confirmed that fade was caused by a previously unknown exoplanet. [9] [10] Having made the discovery at 15 years old, Tom is thought to be the youngest person to discover a planet. [2] [3]
The planet, located over 2,000 light years away from Earth, was cataloged as WASP-142b, the 142nd planet discovered in the WASP survey. [11] Researchers described the planet as a typical hot Jupiter, similar in size and structure to the largest planet in the Solar System but exhibiting a two-day orbit. [12] [13]
Wagg completed a PhD in Astrophysics at the University of Washington in May 2025. [1] [14] His interests lie in massive, binary stars and gravitational waves. His notable works include investigating massive double compact objects that are detectable by LISA [15] and producing an open-source Python package called LEGWORK for performing similar studies. [16]