“THE POWERS OF NATURE”
ADVISORY BOARD
Professor John Cromwell Mather
Honorary Member
2006 Nobel Prize in Physics Laureate, Astrophysicist and Cosmologist
Dr. John Cromwell Mather is a Senior Astrophysicist in the Observational Cosmology Laboratory at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. His research centers on infrared astronomy and cosmology. As an NRC postdoctoral fellow at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (New York City), he led the proposal efforts for the Cosmic Background Explorer and came to NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center to be the Study Scientist and Project Scientist, and also the Principal Investigator for the Far IR Absolute Spectrophotometer (FIRAS) on COBE. He showed that the cosmic microwave background radiation has a blackbody spectrum within 50 ppm.
As Senior Project Scientist for the James Webb Space Telescope, he leads the science team and represents scientific interests within the project management. He has served on advisory and working groups for the National Academy of Sciences, NASA, and the National Science Foundation (for the ALMA, the Atacama Large Millimetre Array, and for the CARA, the Center for Astrophysical Research in the Antarctic).
He has received many awards including the Nobel Prize in Physics, in 2006, for his precise measurements of the cosmic microwave background radiation using the COBE satellite.
Professor Charles L. Bennett
Honorary Member
Bloomberg Distinguished Professor Alumni Centennial Professor
Johns Hopkins University
Charles L. Bennett is a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor and Alumni Centennial Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Johns Hopkins University with a joint appointment at the Applied Physics Laboratory. His major field of research is experimental cosmology. He has contributed to the establishment of a standard model of cosmology and is currently testing and extending that model.
Professor Bennett led the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) mission. WMAP was selected in 1996 as a NASA Explorer mission, launched in June 2001, and its first scientific results were issued in. WMAP quantified the age, content, history, and other key properties of the universe with unprecedented accuracy and precision.
Previous to WMAP, Professor Bennett was the deputy P.I. of the Differential Microwave Radiometers (DMR) instrument and a member of the Science Team of NASA’s Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) mission.
His awards and distinctions include the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, the Shaw Prize in Astronomy, the Gruber Cosmology Prize, the Caterina Tomassoni and Felice Pietro Chisesi Prize, the Comstock Prize in Physics, the Harvey Prize, and the Henry Draper Medal. He twice received the NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal, once for COBE and once for WMAP, and the NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal for WMAP. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences, and a Fellow of the American Physical Society.
Mr. Richard Garriott de Cayeux
The President of The Explorers Club, New York
Richard Garriott de Cayeux currently serves as the President of
The Explorers Club. He is a founding father of the videogame industry and the commercial spaceflight industry, a flown astronaut, and the first explorer to have explored pole-to-pole orbited the Earth and reached the deepest point in the Ocean.
Richard has been inducted into the Computer Gaming Hall of Fame and received the industry lifetime achievement award. He authored the acclaimed Ultima Series and has built 3 leading gaming companies including Origin Systems and Destination Games.
As a leading force in shaping the commercial spaceflight industry, he cofounded Space Adventures, the only company to arrange space flights for private citizens and is the sixth private astronaut to live aboard the International Space Station.
The son of a NASA astronaut, he became the first second-generation astronaut, served on the NASA Advisory Council, and has been a key leader in civilian and commercial space through institutions such as the Challenger Center for Science Education, the XPRIZE Foundation, and Space Adventures.
Richard Garriott de Cayeux is an avid explorer, having traveled around the globe from the jungles of the Amazon to the South Pole, the deep seas of the Titanic and hydrothermal vents to orbit the earth aboard the International Space Station, and most recently to Challenger Deep, the deepest point in our Oceans. His book, “Explore/Create,” chronicles his life from the early days of video gaming, through his spaceflight and to the present day.
Mr. Brian Abbott
Assistant Director, Hayden Planetarium, The American Museum of Natural History
Brian Abbott is the Assistant Director of the Hayden Planetarium at
The American Museum of Natural History. A “cosmic cartographer,” he manages the Digital Universe, a 3-D atlas of the cosmos that is distributed to planetariums and people around the world. At the Museum for over 25 years, he has been active in “big data” wrangling, science visualization, and storytelling. His products appear in exhibits, online videos, space shows, and in our real-time public programming in the planetarium, where he routinely takes visitors on guided tours of the universe.
He organized the conference “Inspiration of Astronomical Phenomena VIII” and edited the resulting proceedings titled “City of Stars,” which brought together scholars who examine astronomy’s influence on all aspects of society. He is also working on mapping the entirety of life, using DNA data and cladistics to interactively examine life in the context of evolution. He is active in the OpenSpace project, an open-source vehicle to visualize scientific data and aspects of the Museum’s collections. Brian is committed to mentoring and is active in the Museum’s LGBT affinity group.
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