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Photo by Scott Quintard
UCLA Photo
Space scientist Andrea Ghez and her team are tracking the orbits
of stars at the galactic center around the supermassive black hole. |
95th faculty research lecture
Discoverer of black hole
BY WENDY SODERBURG
UCLA Today Staff
Last August, millions of people all over the world flocked to observatories,
deserts and mountaintops, hoping to see Mars make its closest pass to
Earth since the Pleistocene era, nearly 60,000 years ago.
At the 95th Faculty Research Lecture on Oct. 30, the campus community
will have another unique opportunity to learn about space, and the subject
this time is even grander: the existence of a supermassive black hole
in the middle of our galaxy. The speaker will be the renowned scientist
whose observations led to the discovery of the black hole in 1998: Physics
and Astronomy Professor Andrea Ghez.
During “Unveiling a Black Hole at the Center of the Milky Way,”
the audience will be treated to Ghez’s firsthand account of this
fascinating discovery. “I’ll talk about how we learned it
was there, what we know about it and what we can learn by analogy about
other galaxies,” the space scientist said.
The winner of several awards and honors — including the Newton
Lacy Pierce Prize of the American Astronomical Society and the Maria Goeppert-Mayer
Award of the American Physical Society — Ghez initially had no idea
what she wanted to do as an undergraduate at MIT.
“I was good at science and enjoyed it, but I probably changed
my major as often as I changed my socks during my second year in school,”
she said. It was her research experience with astrophysicist Hale Bradt
that exposed her to telescopes, and Ghez loved it. “You get to go
to the mountain and stay up all night in all sorts of neat parts of the
world,” she said. “I was really sold after that experience.”
Ghez received a B.S. from MIT in 1987 and a Ph.D. from Caltech in 1992,
both in physics. A Hubble postdoctoral fellowship then took her to the
University of Arizona. She came to UCLA in 1994 — “the place
to be for infrared astronomy” — to gain access to the Keck
I telescope atop the dormant Mauna Kea volcano in Hawaii. It was by using
Keck, co-owned by UC and Caltech, that Ghez was able to make her extraordinary
discovery of the black hole.
Besides conducting research, teaching classes and serving as an adviser
to undergraduates, graduate students and postdocs, Ghez finds time to
spend with her husband, Tom Latourrette, and their 2-year-old son, Evan.
“Having a child really forces you to focus your efforts, so you
get very efficient with your time,” she said, laughing. But it hasn’t
caused her to slow down at all.
“Keck is 10 years old now, so we’re thinking about building
the next generation of telescopes,” Ghez said. “It’s
easy to make discoveries if you have the greatest instrument possible.
Telescopes usually take around 15 years to go from conception to fruition,
so it’s about time.”
The 95th Faculty Research Lecture, which is open to all and
is part of a tradition that honors outstanding scholars and researchers
at UCLA, will take place Oct. 30 from 3 p.m.-4:30 p.m. in Schoenberg Hall. |
