Sheperd "Shep" S. Doeleman (born 1967) is an American astrophysicist. His research focuses on super massive black holes with sufficient resolution to directly observe the event horizon. He is a senior research fellow at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian and the Founding Director[1] of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) project.[2] He led the international team of researchers that produced the first directly observed image of a black hole.[3][4]
Sheperd S. Doeleman | |
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Born | Sheperd Nacheman 1967 Wilsele, Belgium |
Awards | Henry Draper Medal (2021) |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Astrophysics |
Institutions | Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian |
Thesis | Imaging Active Galactic Nuclei with 3mm-VLBI (1995) |
Doctoral advisors | Alan E.E. Rogers and Bernard F. Burke |
Doeleman was named one of Time magazines 100 Most Influential People of 2019.[5]
He was born in Wilsele in Belgium to American parents. The family returned to the United States a few months later, and he grew up in Portland, Oregon. He was later adopted by his stepfather Nelson Doeleman.[6]
He earned a B.A. at Reed College in 1986 and then spent a year in Antarctica working on multiple space-science experiments at McMurdo Station. He then went on to earn a PhD in astrophysics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1995; his dissertation was titled Imaging Active Galactic Nuclei with 3mm-VLBI. He has worked at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn and returned to MIT in 1995, where he later became assistant director of the Haystack Observatory.[7][8]
His research has focused in particular on problems that require ultra-high resolving power. He is known for heading the group of over 200 researchers at research institutions in several countries that produced the first aperture synthesis image of a black hole.[4]
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