Fiona A. Harrison is the Kent and Joyce Kresa Leadership Chair of the Division of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy at

Caltech The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech or CIT)The university itself only spells its short form as "Caltech"; the institution considers other spellings such a"Cal Tech" and "CalTech" incorrect. The institute is also occasional ...

, Harold A. Rosen Professor of Physics at Caltech and the Principal Investigator for NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (

NuSTAR NuSTAR (Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, also named Explorer 93 and SMEX-11) is a NASA space-based X-ray telescope that uses a conical approximation to a Wolter telescope to focus high energy X-rays from astrophysical sources, especiall ...

) mission. She won the Hans A. Bethe Prize in 2020 for her work on

Biography

Harrison was born in

Santa Monica, California Santa Monica (; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Santa Mónica'') is a city in Los Angeles County, California, Los Angeles County, situated along Santa Monica Bay on California's South Coast (California), South Coast. Santa Monica's 2020 United Sta ...

but moved to

Boulder, Colorado Boulder is a home rule city that is the county seat and most populous municipality of Boulder County, Colorado, United States. The city population was 108,250 at the 2020 United States census, making it the 12th most populous city in Color ...

, at age three. She completed her undergraduate degree from

Dartmouth College Dartmouth College (; ) is a private research university in Hanover, New Hampshire. Established in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, it is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. Although founded to educate Native A ...

in 1985 with high honors in physics, and went to

U.C. Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant univ ...

for graduate studies, completing a PhD in 1993. She then went to

as a Millikan Fellow, joining the faculty as an Assistant Professor of Physics in 1995. She became a full professor in 2005 and was appointed as the Benjamin M. Rosen Professor of Physics in 2013.

Research

Harrison's research combines the development of new instrumentation with observational work focused on high energy observations of

black hole A black hole is a region of spacetime where gravitation, gravity is so strong that nothing, including light or other Electromagnetic radiation, electromagnetic waves, has enough energy to escape it. The theory of general relativity predicts t ...

neutron star A neutron star is the collapsed core of a massive supergiant star, which had a total mass of between 10 and 25 solar masses, possibly more if the star was especially metal-rich. Except for black holes and some hypothetical objects (e.g. white ...

gamma-ray burst In gamma-ray astronomy, gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are immensely energetic explosions that have been observed in distant galaxies. They are the most energetic and luminous electromagnetic events since the Big Bang. Bursts can last from ten milli ...

s and

supernova remnant A supernova remnant (SNR) is the structure resulting from the explosion of a star in a supernova. The supernova remnant is bounded by an expanding shock wave, and consists of ejected material expanding from the explosion, and the interstellar mat ...

s. As the Principal Investigator for

, the first focusing telescope in orbit operating in the high energy part of the

X-ray spectrum X-ray spectroscopy is a general term for several spectroscopic techniques for characterization of materials by using x-ray radiation. Characteristic X-ray spectroscopy When an electron from the inner shell of an atom is excited by the energy o ...

(3 – 79 keV), she led an international team to propose, develop and launch the mission. The focal plane detectors and instrument electronics were built in Harrison's labs at

. She led the science team executing the two-year baseline mission, which extended from August 2012 – August 2014. Harrison's observational research showed that the afterglows of gamma-ray bursts exhibit breaks in their decay rate due to collimation of the ejecta. Scientific highlights from the NuSTAR mission include mapping the radioactive debris in the Cassieopeia A supernova remnant to constrain the core collapse explosion mechanism, measurement of the spin of supermassive and stellar mass

black holes A black hole is a region of spacetime where gravity is so strong that nothing, including light or other electromagnetic waves, has enough energy to escape it. The theory of general relativity predicts that a sufficiently compact mass can def ...

, the discovery of a

magnetar A magnetar is a type of neutron star with an extremely powerful magnetic field (∼109 to 1011 T, ∼1013 to 1015 G). The magnetic-field decay powers the emission of high-energy electromagnetic radiation, particularly X-rays and gamma rays.War ...

in the

Galactic Center The Galactic Center or Galactic Centre is the rotational center, the barycenter, of the Milky Way galaxy. Its central massive object is a supermassive black hole of about 4 million solar masses, which is called Sagittarius A*, a compact rad ...

, and the discovery of an ultra luminous pulsar.

Awards and honors

Harrison was awarded the Presidential Early Career award by President Clinton in 2000, was named one of America's best leaders by U.S. News and the Kennedy School of Government, was awarded a

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...

Outstanding Public Leadership medal in 2013, and the

Bruno Rossi Prize The Bruno Rossi Prize is awarded annually by the High Energy Astrophysics division of the American Astronomical Society "for a significant contribution to High Energy Astrophysics, with particular emphasis on recent, original work". Named after as ...

of the American Astronomical Society in 2015. She is a fellow of the

American Physical Society The American Physical Society (APS) is a not-for-profit membership organization of professionals in physics and related disciplines, comprising nearly fifty divisions, sections, and other units. Its mission is the advancement and diffusion of k ...

, (search on year=2011 and institution=California Institute of Technology) the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and ...

, an honorary fellow of the

Royal Astronomical Society (Whatever shines should be observed) , predecessor = , successor = , formation = , founder = , extinction = , merger = , merged = , type = NGO ...

, and honorary degree Doctor Technices Hornoris Causa from the

Danish Technical University The Technical University of Denmark ( da, Danmarks Tekniske Universitet), often simply referred to as DTU, is a polytechnic university and school of engineering. It was founded in 1829 at the initiative of Hans Christian Ørsted as Denmark's fi ...

, and a member of the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...

. She was elected a Legacy Fellow of the

American Astronomical Society The American Astronomical Society (AAS, sometimes spoken as "double-A-S") is an American society of professional astronomers and other interested individuals, headquartered in Washington, DC. The primary objective of the AAS is to promote the adv ...

in 2020.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Harrison, Fiona A Year of birth missing (living people) Living people American astrophysicists Fellows of the American Physical Society Foreign Fellows of the Royal Astronomical Society Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Fellows of the American Astronomical Society NASA people California Institute of Technology faculty University of California, Berkeley alumni Dartmouth College alumni Space scientists Women space scientists

Biography

Research

Awards and honors

See also

References