The Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian

The Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian

Support Our Science

University of Turin Awards Margaret Geller Honorary Degree

University of Turin Awards Margaret Geller Honorary Degree

Dr. Margaret Geller

On April 10, 2017, the University of Turin in Italy conferred an honorary degree in physics to the CfA's Margaret Geller in a day-long celebration.

Margaret J. Geller is a pioneer in mapping the nearby universe. Her maps provided a new view of the enormous patterns in the distribution of galaxies – 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 join the pieces of this grand puzzle together, her research projects range from the structure of our own Milky Way galaxy to mapping the distribution of the mysterious, ubiquitous dark matter in the universe.

The University of Turin, founded in 1404, is one of the oldest universities in the world and includes amongst its alumni Amedeo Avogadro and Joseph-Louis LaGrange.

More information about Dr. Geller and her work can be found at https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/~mjg/

Related News

Christine Jones Forman Elected to National Academy of Sciences

Billions of Celestial Objects Revealed in Gargantuan Survey of the Milky Way

The Most Precise Accounting Yet of Dark Energy and Dark Matter

Dozens of Newly Discovered Gravitational Lenses Could Reveal Ancient Galaxies and the Nature of Dark Matter

CfA Celebrates Class of 2022 Graduates

Meet an Astrophysicist: Tanveer Karim

Astrophysicists Reveal Largest-Ever Suite of Universe Simulations

Latest Results from Cosmic Microwave Background Measurements

To Map the Universe, Astrophysicists Launch Largest Sky Survey Yet

Astronomers Release New All-Sky Map of the Milky Way's Outer Reaches

Projects

AbacusSummit

Theoretical Astrophysics, Institute for Theory and Computation

AbacusSummit is the world’s largest suite of high-performance cosmological N-body simulations, developed to meet and exceed the analysis requirements of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument. These simulations allow one to predict the large-scale structure that results from a wide range of cosmological models, enabling detailed investigations of theories of cosmological structure formation and comparison to the coming decade of observational surveys.

AstroAI

Atomic and Molecular Physics, High Energy Astrophysics, Optical and Infrared Astronomy, Radio and Geoastronomy, Solar, Stellar, and Planetary Sciences, Theoretical Astrophysics, Harvard University Department of Astronomy, Science Education Department, Central Engineering, Director's Office, Chandra X-ray Center, Institute for Theoretical Atomic Molecular and Optical Physics, Institute for Theory and Computation

AstroAI is a institute dedicated to the development of artificial intelligence to enable next generation astrophysics at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian. Learn More

Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI)

Optical and Infrared Astronomy

The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) consortium is conducting a five-year survey to map the large-scale structure of the Universe over one-third of the sky and 11 billion years of cosmic history, aiming to study the physics of dark energy.

GMACS

Optical and Infrared Astronomy, Central Engineering

GMACS - Moderate Dispersion Optical Spectrograph for the Giant Magellan Telescope is a powerful optical spectrograph that will unlock the power of the Giant Magellan Telescope for research ranging from the formation of stars and planets to cosmology.

For Scientists

Physics of the Primordial Universe

Harvard University Department of Astronomy, Institute for Theory and Computation

The Big Bang theory of cosmology successfully describes the 13.7 billion years of evolutionary history of our Universe. However, it is known that the current Big Bang theory cannot self-consistently explain its initial conditions. We are interested in finding out what caused the Big Bang, and the physics involved in this primordial epoch. We study physics, build models and propose observables for the primordial universe using quantum field theory, general relativity and/or string theory, and test them with data from astrophysical observations.

Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS)

Optical and Infrared Astronomy, Chandra X-ray Center

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey continues its twenty-year legacy of wide-field optical/infrared imaging and spectroscopy, which has led astronomy into the era of large archives and data science. Harvard and Smithsonian are both full institutional members of the latest epoch of the survey, SDSS-V, which started observations in 2020.