Jeremiah P. Ostriker

Who is Jeremiah P. Ostriker?

Jeremiah Paul Ostriker is an astrophysicist and a professor of astronomy at Columbia University. He received his B.A. from Harvard, his Ph.D at the University of Chicago, and then carried out post-doctoral work at the University of Cambridge. From 1971 to 1995, Ostriker was a professor at Princeton, and served as Provost there from 1995 to 2001. From 2001 to 2003, he was appointed as Plumian Professor of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy at the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge. He then returned to Princeton as the Charles Young Professor of Astronomy. He moved to Columbia in 2012.

Ostriker has been very influential in advancing the theory that most of the mass in the universe is not visible at all, but consists of dark matter. His research has also focused on the interstellar medium, galaxy evolution, cosmology and black holes. On June 20, 2013 Ostriker was given the White House Champions of Change Award for his role in initiating the Sloan Digital Sky Survey project, which makes all of its astronomical data sets available publicly on the Internet