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Contact Information Margaret J. Geller Mail Stop 19 60 Garden Street Cambridge, MA 02138 USA mgeller..at..cfa.harvard.edu Telephone (617) 495 7409 FAX (617) 495 7467
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Margaret J. Geller Senior Scientist
Short Biography
Margaret J. Geller is a Senior Scientist at the
Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. She was a pioneer in mapping
the nearby universe. Her maps provided a new view of the enormous patterns
in the distribution of galaxies like the Milky Way --- the largest patterns
we know.
Dr. Geller's long-range scientific goals are to discover what the
universe looks like and
to understand how it came to have the rich patterns we observe today.
To put the pieces of this grand puzzle together her research projects range
from the structure of our own galaxy, the Milky Way, to mapping the
distribution of the mysterious, ubiquitous dark matter in the universe.
Dr. Geller's current main research interests are:
Mapping the distribution of the mysterious, ubiquitous dark matter in the
universe. She leads a project called SHELS.
Investigating the implications of the discovery of hypervelocity stars, stars
ejected a high velocity from the Galactic center. These stars can travel
across the Milky Way and may be an important tracer of the matter
distribution in the Galaxy. Geller is a co-discoverer of this new class of
objects.
Mapping clusters of galaxies to understand how these systems develop over the
history of the universe.
Measuring and interpreting the signatures of star formation in the
spectra of galaxies to understand the links between the star formation in
galaxies and their environment.
In July 1990, Dr. Geller
received a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship.
She is a member of the
National Academy of Sciences
and of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
She is the recipient of other prizes including the Newcomb-Cleveland Award
of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1991),
the Klopsteg Award
of the American Association of Physics Teachers (1996),
a Library Lion from the New York Public Library (1997), the
ADION Medal (2002), and
Magellanic Premium of the American Philosophical Society (2008). She has given the
Bethe Lectures at Cornell University and the
Helen Sawyer Hogg
Lecture of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada.
Margaret Geller has made films about science. Her 8-minute video
Where the Galaxies Are , produced in 1989,
the video was the first graphic voyage through the universe based on observations.
The video was displayed at several major science museums and
graphics from this were widely broadcast.
A later 40-minute film, So Many Galaxies...So Little Time,
contains fancier prize-winning graphics
which are on display at the
National Air and Space Museum among others.
Dr. Geller is broadly committed to public education in science.
Her many public lectures, radio interviews,
and television appearances have introduced an international audience
to the idea that today we can map the universe.
Some popular articles by and about Margaret Geller: |