David Spergel

David Spergel

David Nathaniel Spergel (born March 25, 1961), is an American theoretical astrophysicist. He is President of the Simons Foundation and the Charles A. Young Professor of Astronomy on the Class of 1897 Foundation, Emeritus, at Princeton University. He founded the Center for Computational Astrophysics and served as its first director. Spergel is known for his work on the WMAP (Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe) mission. Spergel is a MacArthur Fellow. He was a member of the NASA Advisory Council and chair of the Space Studies Board. He was once the W.M. Keck distinguished visiting professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. He was part of the team that originated the WMAP mission and designed the spacecraft, and has worked on deciphering the data that it beams back from space. Spergel is playing a leading role in developing the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, a multibillion-dollar space mission planned for launch in the mid-2020s. He shared the 2010 Shaw Prize in astronomy with Charles L. Bennett and Lyman Alexander Page, Jr. for their work on WMAP. He shared the 2015 Dannie Heineman Prize with Marc Kamionkowski "for their outstanding contributions to the investigation of the fluctuations of the cosmic microwave background that have led to major breakthroughs in our understanding of the universe".

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