Lars Bildsten (born 1964) is an American
astrophysicist, best known for his work on the physics of
white dwarf
A white dwarf is a stellar core remnant composed mostly of electron-degenerate matter. A white dwarf is very dense: its mass is comparable to the Sun's, while its volume is comparable to the Earth's. A white dwarf's faint luminosity comes ...
s and their explosions as
Type Ia supernova
A Type Ia supernova (read: "type one-A") is a type of supernova that occurs in binary systems (two stars orbiting one another) in which one of the stars is a white dwarf. The other star can be anything from a giant star to an even smaller white ...
e. He is the sixth director of the
Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics
The Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (KITP) is a research institute of the University of California, Santa Barbara. KITP is one of the most renowned institutes for theoretical physics in the world, and brings theorists in physics and rela ...
at
the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) and a professor in the
UCSB Physics Department The Physics Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara has 58 faculty members. It offers academic programs leading to the B.A., B.S., and Ph.D. degrees.
Faculty Awards
As of 2014, the department counts three Nobel Prize winners am ...
.
Biography
Bildsten's undergraduate degree is in engineering physics, from
Ohio State University
The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best publ ...
. Bildsten was a
Hertz Foundation
The Fannie and John Hertz Foundation is an American non-profit organization that awards fellowships to Ph.D. students in the applied physical, biological and engineering sciences. The fellowship provides $250,000 of support over five years. The ...
fellow and received a Ph.D. in theoretical physics at
Cornell University
Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to tea ...
in 1991. He was then a research fellow 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 ...
for three years, after which he accepted a faculty appointment at the
University of California, 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 u ...
. Rising from assistant to associate professor, in both the physics and astronomy departments, he moved to UCSB in 1999.
[Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics]
"Lars Bildsten Biographical Sketch"
/ref> In 2010, he was awarded the Wayne Rosing, Simon and Diana Raab chair in theoretical astrophysics. He was named director of the Kavli Institute, succeeding David Gross
David Jonathan Gross (; born February 19, 1941) is an American theoretical physicist and string theorist. Along with Frank Wilczek and David Politzer, he was awarded the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics for their discovery of asymptotic freedom. ...
, in 2012.
In addition to his university teaching and research, Bildsten has devoted significant effort to strengthening science and engineering education in grades 7-12. A member of the board of directors of Santa Barbara's Dos Pueblos Engineering Academy Foundation, he worked to raise $3 million in funding for a dedicated facility and to support math tutors.
Honors
Bildsten received an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship in 1995. In 1998, the Research Corporation designated him as a Cottrell Scholar. He was awarded the Helen B. Warner Prize
The Helen B. Warner Prize for Astronomy is awarded annually by the American Astronomical Society to a young astronomer (aged less than 36,
or within 8 years of the award of their PhD) for a significant contribution to observational or theoretical ...
of the American Astronomical Society in 1999 and the 2017 Dannie Heineman Prize. His invited lectureships include the 2000 Edwin Salpeter
Edwin Ernest Salpeter (3 December 1924 – 26 November 2008,) was an Austrian–Australian–American astrophysicist.
Life
Born in Vienna to a Jewish family, Salpeter emigrated from Austria to Australia while in his teens to escape the Nazis. He ...
Lecture at Cornell, and the 2004 Biermann Lecture at the Max-Planck Institute for Astrophysics.
He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2018 and Elected a Legacy Fellow of the American Astronomical Society in 2020.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bildsten, Lars
1964 births
Living people
21st-century American physicists
American astronomers
Cornell University alumni
Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences
Fellows of the American Astronomical Society
Winners of the Dannie Heineman Prize for Astrophysics
California Institute of Technology fellows
Ohio State University College of Engineering alumni
University of California, Berkeley College of Letters and Science faculty
University of California, Santa Barbara faculty
Fellows of the American Physical Society