David Spergel's Home Page


Research Interests

I am a theoretical astrophysicist. My interests range from the search for planets around nearby stars to the shape of the universe.

Over the last decade, the WMAP Satellite has been the main focus of my research. WMAP was successfully launched on June 30, 2001. The results from WMAP are described in a series of papers. The WMAP 2003 and 2006 parameters papers are currently the 4th and 10th most cited paper in the entire SPIRES catalog and the two most cited papers in physics published this millenium. Our seven year resutls paper is the most cited paper published in 2011 in physics and strophysics.

See this interview for a brief description of the WMAP results and see Mike Lemonick's book for the story of the WMAP satellite. My next major CMB project is the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) and supporting observations through the Southern Cosmology Surveys, an international collaboration.

I am part of a group of scientists and engineers at Princeton University who are developing new technologies that should hopefully enable the direct imaging of earth-like planets. I recently led a study of an 4-meter class telescope/occulter system that we called THEIA.

I am part of the new Princeton Center for Theoretical Science. I am also part of the Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (IPMU)

Here are links to a list of my recent and most-cited papers.

Contact Information

Teaching

Administration

I am serving as Chair of the Department and am the Charles A. Young Professor of Astronomy on the Class of 1897 Foundation. I am an Associate Faculty Member in the Physics Department and in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department. My CV and recent publications.

Talks

Recent Results from ACT talk at IPMU (Video)
New Cosmology Talk
Dark Energy Talk
Talk on Terrestrial Planet Finding
My popular talk on "Taking the Universe's Baby Picture" is available on-line at UCTV. Another version of the lecture is also available at iTunes U.


Astrophysics Links

  • Princeton University Observatory and Library .
  • Other astronomy resources.
  • Atacama Cosmology Telescope
  • CMB Experiments at Princeton
  • Cosmology at Princeton"
  • Princeton Center for Theoretical Physics
  • WMAP web page


    Other Interesting Links


    Former Thesis Students

    Current Thesis Students

    Current Postdoctoral Fellows

    Current Senior Thesis Students

    Awards

  • Shaw Prize
  • Science Citation Laureate
  • MacArthur Fellowship
  • National Academy of Sciences
    Locations of visitors to this page