Citizenship United States Spouse Bruce Elmegreen Role Astronomer | Name Debra Elmegreen Nationality United States Fields Astronomy | |
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Institutions Kitt Peak Observatory
Arecibo Observatory
Hale Observatory
Vassar College (1985-current) Education Princeton University (AB)
Harvard University (MA, PhD) | ||
PSW 2286 2020 Vision | Debra Elmegreen
Debra Meloy Elmegreen (born November 23, 1952 in South Bend, Indiana) is an American astronomer. She was the first woman to graduate from Princeton University with a degree in astrophysics, and she was the first female post-doctoral researcher at the Carnegie Observatories. She married astronomer Bruce Elmegreen, and they have authored astronomy papers together.
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Since 1985, she has been a professor of astronomy at Vassar College. She wrote an astronomy textbook published by Prentice Hall in 1997. She served as president of the American Astronomical Society from 2010-2012.
Biography
Elmegreen was born in South Bend, Indiana in 1952. She became interested in astronomy at a young age. She received her bachelor's degree in astrophysics from the Princeton University in 1975, where she was the first woman to graduate with an astrophysics major. She earned both her Masters and Ph.D from Harvard University in astronomy. Elmegreen did post-doctoral research at the Hale Observatory (now Mount Wilson Observatory) beginning in 1979, where she was the first female post-doctoral researcher at any of the Carnegie Observatories. Starting in 1985, she began teaching astronomy at Vassar College. In 1990, she became an associate professor and then department chair in 1993.
Elmegreen is particularly interested in Star formation and star forming galaxies. In 1997, Elmegreen published an astronomy textbook for under graduates titled, Galaxies and Galactic Structure, through Prentice Hall. Elmegreen has also published over 200 academic papers. She was president of the American Astronomical Society from 2010-2012, and was appointed as a board member of the 2010 Astronomy and Astrophysics Decadal Survey through the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.
Since 1976, she has been married to the astronomer Bruce Elmegreen. In 2013, they authored a paper, "The Onset of Spiral Structure in the Universe", published in the Astrophysical Journal.
Works
Elmegreen has also published over 200 academic papers including: