John N. Bahcall

John N. Bahcall (December 30 1934 – August 17 2005) was an American astrophysicist. He is best known for his contributions to the solar neutrino problem and the development of the Hubble Space Telescope, and for his leadership and development of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.

Academic career

He graduated with an A.B. from Berkeley in 1956, obtained his M.S. in physics in 1957 from the University of Chicago and his Ph.D. in physics from Harvard in 1961. He became a research fellow in physics at Indiana University in 1960 and then worked at the California Institute of Technology from 1962 to 1970, where he worked alongside Richard Feynman, Murray Gell-Mann, and William Fowler.

Related Topics:
A.B. - M.S. - Physics - University of Chicago - Ph.D. - Harvard - 1961 - Indiana University - California Institute of Technology - Richard Feynman - Murray Gell-Mann - William Fowler

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He was appointed professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton in 1971. He became a member of the National Academy of Science in 1976. He was president of the American Astronomical Society from 1990 to 1992, and was president-elect of the American Physical Society at the date of his death.

Related Topics:
Institute for Advanced Study - Princeton - National Academy of Science - American Astronomical Society - American Physical Society

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Bahcall is best known for his work on the solar neutrino problem with physical chemist Raymond Davis, Jr. Together, Davis and Bahcall collaborated on the creation of a underground detector for neutrinos in a gold mine in South Dakota (essentially a very large tank filled with cleaning fluid). The flux of neutrinos found by the detector was much less than that predicted by Bahcall, a discrepancy that took over 30 years to resolve. Many thought that Bahcall should have shared the 2002 Nobel Prize that was awarded to Davis and Masatoshi Koshiba.

Related Topics:
Solar neutrino problem - Physical chemist - Raymond Davis, Jr - Neutrino - Gold mine - South Dakota - Cleaning fluid - Nobel Prize - Masatoshi Koshiba

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Bahcall's other great contribution was in the development and implementation of the Hubble Telescope, alongside Lyman Spitzer, Jr from the 1970s through to the period after the telescope was launched in 1990. In 1992, he received NASA's Distinguished Public Service Medal for this work.

Related Topics:
Hubble Telescope - Lyman Spitzer, Jr - 1970s - 1990 - NASA's - Distinguished Public Service Medal

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He also worked in many other areas: the standard model of a galaxy, with a massive black hole surrounded by stars, is known as the Bahcall-Wolf model; the Bahcall-Soneira model was for many years the standard model for the structure of the Milky Way; and he contributed to accurate models of stellar interiors. All togther Bahcall published over 600 scientific papers and five books in the field of astrophysics.

Related Topics:
Black hole - Bahcall-Wolf model - Bahcall-Soneira model - Milky Way

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