8th Annual Mark Gurevitch Lecture

Mark Gurevitch Memorial Lecture Series

Friday, April 11, 2014
5:00 PM
Featuring Dr. Andrea Ghez, Department of Physics and Astronomy, UCLA
The Monster at the Heart of the Milky Way
Abstract:
Learn about new developments in the study of black holes. Through the capture and analysis of two decades of high-resolution imaging, Dr. Ghez and her team have moved the case for a supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy from a possibility to a certainty. This has provided the best evidence to date that supermassive black holes exist. Her work also explores the role that black holes play in the formation and evolution of galaxies. Several unexpected surprises have been revealed including the presence of massive young stars orbiting in close proximity of a black hole and a possible gas cloud headed straight for the black hole. The origin of these stars and gas cloud are a challenge to explain, but may provide key insight into the growth of the central black hole.

Andrea M. Ghez, a professor of Physics & Astronomy who holds the Lauren B. Leichtman & Arthur E. Levine chair in Astrophysics, is one of the world’s leading experts in observational astrophysics and heads UCLA’s Galactic Center Group. She earned her B.S in Physics from MIT in 1987, and her PhD from Caltech in 1992 and has been on the faculty at UCLA since 1994. Best known for her ground-backing work on the center of our Galaxy, which has led to the best evidence to date for the existence of supermassive black holes, she has received numerous honor and awards including the Crafoord Prize in Astronomy (she is the first woman to receive a Crafoord prize in any field), a MacArthur Fellowship, election to the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society. Her work can be found in many public outlets including TED, NOVA’s Monster of the Milky Way, Discovery’s Swallowed by a Black Hole, TED, and Griffith Observatory. For more information see http://www.galacticcenter.astro.ucla.edu andhttp://www.astro.ucla.edu/~ghez.

For further information please contact Dr. Erik Bodegom.
More information to follow!