Nationality American Known for Shapiro time delay | Name Irwin Shapiro Fields Astrophysics | |
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Born Irwin Ira Shapiro
October 10, 1929 (age 94)
New York City, New York, U.S. ( 1929-10-10 ) Alma mater Cornell University
Harvard University Thesis Methods of Approximation for High Energy Nuclear Scattering (1955) Notable awards Albert A. Michelson Medal
Dannie Heineman Prize (1983)
Brouwer Award
Charles A. Whitten Medal (1991)
William Bowie Medal
Albert Einstein Medal
Gerard P. Kuiper Prize
Einstein Prize Education Harvard University (1955), Cornell University Awards Guggenheim Fellowship for Natural Sciences, US & Canada Notable students Steven J. Ostro, Alyssa A. Goodman | ||
Irwin Ira Shapiro (born October 10, 1929 in New York City) is an American astrophysicist and Timken University Professor at Harvard University. He has been a professor at Harvard since 1982. He was the director of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics from 1982 to 2004.
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Career
A native of New York, Shapiro graduated from Brooklyn Technical High School in New York City. He later received his B.A. in Mathematics from Cornell University, and later a M.A. and Ph.D in Physics from Harvard University. He joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Lincoln Laboratory in 1954 and became a professor of physics there in 1967. In 1982, he took a position as professor and Guggenheim Fellow at his alma mater, Harvard, and also became director of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. In 1997, he became the first Timken University Professor at the university.
Shapiro's research interests include astrophysics, astrometry, geophysics, gravitation, including the use of gravitational lenses to assess the age of the universe. In 1981, Edward Bowell discovered the 3832 main belt asteroid and it was later named after Shapiro by his former student Steven J. Ostro.