David Spergel

David Nathaniel Spergel (born March 25, 1961), is an American theoretical astrophysicist. He is the Director of the Center for Computational Astrophysics at the Flatiron Institute and the Charles A. Young Professor of Astronomy on the Class of 1897 Foundation, Emeritus, at Princeton University. Spergel is known for his work on the WMAP (Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe) mission. Spergel is a MacArthur Fellow. He was a member of the NASA Advisory Council and chair of the Space Studies Board. He was once the W.M. Keck distinguished visiting professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. He was part of the team that originated the WMAP mission and designed the spacecraft, and has worked on deciphering the data that it beams back from space. Spergel is playing a leading role in developing the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, a multibillion-dollar space mission planned for launch in the mid-2020s. He
shared the 2010 Shaw Prize in astronomy with Charles L. Bennett and Lyman Alexander Page, Jr. for their work on WMAP. He shared the 2015 Dannie Heineman Prize with Marc Kamionkowski "for their outstanding contributions to the investigation of the fluctuations of the cosmic microwave background that have led to major breakthroughs in our understanding of the universe".
In December of 2020, Spergel was selected to succeed Marilyn Simons as president of Simons Foundation, effective July 1st, 2021.
Education.
Spergel was born in Rochester, New York, and attended John Glenn High School in Huntington, New York. He graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in astrophysical sciences from Princeton University in 1982 after completing a senior thesis titled "The jolly red giant: late-type evolved stars and their evolution to planetary nebulae" under the supervision of Gillian R. Knapp. He was then a visiting scholar at Oxford University in 1983, where he studied with James Binney. He obtained his master's degree (Astronomy) at Harvard University, 1984, and his doctorate (Astronomy), Harvard University, 1985, with a thesis entitled "Astrophysical Implications of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles".
Research.
His interests range from the search for planets around nearby stars to the shape of the universe. The WMAP Satellite has been the main focus of his research. His WMAP papers are currently the #1 and #2 most cited new papers in all of physics and space science. WMAP was successfully launched on June 30, 2001. He is also interested in understanding how galaxies form and evolve. Spergel's thesis work was on dark matter and he has recently returned to this field, exploring the possibility that the dark matter might be more complex than previously imagined. In 2000, Spergel and his Princeton colleague Paul Steinhardt introduced the concept of strongly self-interacting dark matter (SIDM). Spergel is among a group of scientists and engineers at Princeton University who are developing new technologies attempting to enable the direct imaging of earth-like planets around nearby stars.
Students.
Spergel's thesis students include Julianne Dalcanton, Arlie Petters, James Rhoads, Eiichiro Komatsu, Hiranya Peiris, Joseph Hennawi, and Shirley Ho. Licia Verde, Jo Dunkley, Rachel Bean and Olivier Dore were postdoctoral researchers in his lab.
Personal life.
Spergel is an avid bicyclist and skier. He has taken sabbaticals in France and Chile.
Awards and honors.
Spergel was named one of "Nature"'s ten "people who mattered" of 2014 on December 18, 2014, along with Maryam Mirzakhani, Radhika Nagpal, and others.
He was awarded the Helen B. Warner Prize for Astronomy in 1994. He was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2001. For 2018 he received the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics.
Spergel was elected as a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2007 and as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2012.
He was elected a Legacy Fellow of the American Astronomical Society in 2020. 