Abraham (Avi) Loeb

Who is Abraham (Avi) Loeb?

Abraham (Avi) Loeb is an American/Israeli theoretical physicist who works on astrophysics and cosmology. Loeb is the Frank B. Baird, Jr. Professor of Science at Harvard University. He serves as Chair of the Harvard Astronomy department and director of the Institute for Theory and Computation within the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. In December 2012, TIME magazine selected Loeb as one of the 25 most influential people in space.

Loeb was born in Israel in 1962 and took part in the national Talpiot program before receiving a graduate degree in Plasma Physics at age 24 from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Between 1988-1993, Loeb was long-term member at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, where he started to work in theoretical astrophysics. In 1993 he moved to Harvard University as an assistant professor in the department of astronomy, where he was tenured three years later. Loeb had received many honors, including the Kennedy prize in 1987, the Guggenheim Fellowship in 2002, the Salpeter Lectureship at Cornell University in 2006, the Bahcall Lectureship at Tel Aviv University in 2006, the Merle Kingsley Lectureship at Caltech in 2007, the Australian Institute of Physics Lectureship at the University of Melbourne in 2007, the Distinguished Visiting Lectureship at the Carnegie Observatories in 2009, the Las Cumbres Observatory Lectureship at Santa Barbara in 2011, the Sackler Lectureship at Leiden Observatory in 2011, the Galileo Galilei Chair for 2011-12 from Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, Italy, and the Miegunyah Distinguished Visiting Fellowship for 2013 at the University of Melbourne in Australia. For over two decades he held a visiting professorship at the Weizmann Institute of Science, and since 2011 he was awarded a Sackler Professorship by special appointment in the School of Physics and Astronomy at Tel Aviv University.