Andrea M. Ghez

Andrea Mia Ghez (born June 16, 1965) is an American astrophysicist and professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy and the Lauren B. Leichtman & Arthur E. Levine chair in Astrophysics, at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research focuses on the center of the Milky Way galaxy.

In 2020, she became the fourth woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics, sharing one half of the prize with Reinhard Genzel (the other half being awarded to Roger Penrose). The Nobel Prize was awarded to Ghez and Genzel for their discovery of a supermassive compact object, now generally recognized to be a black hole, in the Milky Way's galactic center.

Early life

Ghez was born in New York City. She is the daughter of Susanne (née Gayton) and Gilbert Ghez. Her father, of Jewish heritage, was born in Rome, Italy, to a family originally from Tunisia and Frankfurt, Germany. Her mother was from an Irish Catholic family from North Attleborough, Massachusetts.

Her family moved from New York to Chicago when she was a child, and Ghez attended the University of Chicago Lab School. The Apollo program Moon landings inspired Ghez to aspire to be the first female astronaut, and her mother encouraged that goal by purchasing a telescope. Her most influential female role model was her high school chemistry teacher.

She began college by majoring in mathematics, then changed to physics. She received a BS in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1987. While there, she was a member of the fraternity of St. Anthony Hall.Dangremond, Sam (2022).
Reaching for the Stars
(PDF). ''The Review''. St. Anthony Hall (Spring): 19. She received a PhD under the direction of Gerry Neugebauer at the California Institute of Technology in 1992.

Career

Ghez's research employs high spatial resolution imaging techniques, such as the adaptive optics system at the Keck telescopes, to study star-forming regions and the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way known as Sagittarius A*. She uses the kinematics of stars near the center of the Milky Way as a probe to investigate this region. The high resolution of the Keck telescopes gave a significant improvement over the first major study of galactic center kinematics by Reinhard Genzel's group.

In 2004, Ghez was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, and in 2012, she was elected to the American Philosophical Society. In 2019, she was elected as a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS).

Ghez has appeared in many television documentaries produced by networks such as the BBC
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