Dr. Andrea Ghez is a preeminent astrophysicist renowned for her pioneering investigations of the galactic center of the Milky Way. She currently serves as Professor of Physics and Astronomy and holds the Lauren B. Leichtman & Arthur E. Levine Chair in Astrophysics at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she also leads the UCLA Galactic Center Group. Born in New York City in 1965, Dr. Ghez received her undergraduate degree in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1987 before earning her doctorate from the California Institute of Technology in 1992 under the supervision of Gerry Neugebauer. She began her academic career at UCLA as an assistant professor in 1994 and achieved the rank of full professor by 2000, establishing herself as one of the world's leading experts in observational astrophysics.
Dr. Ghez's transformative research has provided the most compelling evidence to date for the existence of a supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, a discovery that earned her the Nobel Prize in Physics. Through her innovative adaptation of speckle imaging techniques for the infrared spectrum and her advancement of adaptive optics using artificial laser stars, she overcame longstanding limitations of ground-based telescopes to achieve unprecedented precision in galactic observation. Her meticulous long-term analyses of stellar orbits in the Sagittarius constellation revealed stars moving at extraordinary velocities around an invisible central mass, confirming the presence of a supermassive compact object now generally recognized as a black hole. This groundbreaking work, conducted primarily with the 10-meter Keck telescope, has fundamentally reshaped our understanding of galactic dynamics and the role of black holes in the formation and evolution of galaxies.
Her contributions to astrophysics have been widely recognized, including becoming the fourth woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2020, sharing the honor with Reinhard Genzel for their independent discoveries regarding the galactic center black hole. Dr. Ghez has received numerous prestigious accolades such as the MacArthur Fellowship, the Crafoord Prize in Astronomy in 2012 from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, and thereby became the first woman to receive a Crafoord Prize in any field, and the Bakerian Medal from the Royal Society of London. She has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society, cementing her status as a leader in the scientific community. Continuing her research at the forefront of observational astronomy, Dr. Ghez remains dedicated to improving spatial resolution techniques to further unravel the mysteries of the dust-obscured regions at the heart of our galaxy.
