Marc Kuchner (born August 7, 1972) is an American astrophysicist, a staff member at NASA's

Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) The Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) is a major NASA space research laboratory located approximately northeast of Washington, D.C. in Greenbelt, Maryland, United States. Established on May 1, 1959 as NASA's first space flight center, GSFC empl ...

known for work on images and imaging of disks and exoplanets. Together with Wesley Traub, he invented the band-limited

coronagraph A coronagraph is a telescopic attachment designed to block out the direct light from a star so that nearby objects – which otherwise would be hidden in the star's bright glare – can be resolved. Most coronagraphs are intended to view ...

, a design for the proposed Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF) telescope, also to be used on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). He is also known for his novel supercomputer models of planet-disk interactions and for developing the ideas of

ocean planet An ocean world, ocean planet, panthalassic planet, maritime world, water world or aquaplanet, is a type of planet that contains a substantial amount of water in form of oceans, either beneath the surface, as subsurface oceans, or on the surfa ...

carbon planet A carbon planet is a theoretical type of planet that contains more carbon than oxygen. Carbon is the fourth most abundant element in the universe by mass after hydrogen, helium, and oxygen. Marc Kuchner and Sara Seager coined the term "carbon ...

s, and

helium planet A helium planet is a planet with a helium-dominated atmosphere. This contrasts with ordinary gas giants such as Jupiter and Saturn, whose atmospheres consist primarily of hydrogen, with helium as a secondary component only. Helium planets might fo ...

s. Kuchner appears as an expert commentator in the National Geographic television show "Alien Earths" and frequently answers the "Ask Astro" questions in

Astronomy Magazine ''Astronomy'' is a monthly American magazine about astronomy. Targeting amateur astronomers, it contains columns on sky viewing, reader-submitted astrophotographs, and articles on astronomy and astrophysics for general readers. History ''As ...

. He currently serves as the principal investigator of the

citizen science Citizen science (CS) (similar to community science, crowd science, crowd-sourced science, civic science, participatory monitoring, or volunteer monitoring) is scientific research conducted with participation from the public (who are sometimes re ...

websites

Disk Detective Disk Detective is the first NASA-led and funded-collaboration project with Zooniverse. It is NASA's largest crowdsourcing citizen science project aiming at engaging the general public in search of stars, which are surrounded by dust-rich circ ...

and

Backyard Worlds Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 is a NASA-funded citizen science project which is part of the Zooniverse web portal. It aims to discover new brown dwarfs, faint objects that are less massive than stars, some of which might be among the nearest neighb ...

Background

Kuchner was born in

Montreal, Quebec Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the second-most populous city in Canada and most populous city in the Canadian province of Quebec. Founded in 1642 as '' Ville-Marie'', or "City of Mary", it is named after Mount Royal, the triple-pea ...

, Canada. He received his bachelor's degree in physics from

Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

in 1994 and his Ph.D. in astronomy from California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in 2000. His doctoral thesis advisor was

Michael E. Brown Michael E. Brown (born June 5, 1965) is an American astronomer, who has been professor of planetary astronomy at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) since 2003. His team has discovered many trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs), including ...

. After he earned his Ph.D., Kuchner studied at the Center for Astrophysics Harvard & Smithsonian as a Michelson Fellow, and then at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...

as a Hubble Fellow. Kuchner was awarded the 2009

SPIE SPIE (formerly the Society of Photographic Instrumentation Engineers, later the Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers) is an international not-for-profit professional society for optics and photonics technology, founded in 1955. It ...

early career achievement award for his work on coronagraphy. Kuchner's parents are neurosurgeon Eugene Kuchner and psychologist Joan Kuchner. His wife is epidemiologist Jennifer Nuzzo.

''Marketing for Scientists''

Kuchner is the author of a book, ''Marketing for Scientists: How to Shine in Tough Times'' (2011,

Island Press Island Press is a nonprofit, environmental publisher based in Washington, D.C., United States, that specializes in natural history, ecology, conservation, and the built environment. Established in 1984, Island Press generates about half of its re ...

). The book provides career and communication advice for scientists using the language of marketing, with chapters on "business", "how to sell something," "branding" and so on. This approach struck some reviewers as cynical about human nature. But readers from a wide spectrum of scientific disciplines praised the book's unique angle and breadth of research.

Ecology Ecology () is the study of the relationships between living organisms, including humans, and their physical environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community, ecosystem, and biosphere level. Ecology overlaps wi ...

described it as "a must-read for ecologists and, indeed, for all scientists, mathematicians, and engineers at all career stages." Astrophysicist

Neil deGrasse Tyson Neil deGrasse Tyson ( or ; born October 5, 1958) is an American astrophysicist, author, and science communicator. Tyson studied at Harvard University, the University of Texas at Austin, and Columbia University. From 1991 to 1994, he was a po ...

called it, "the first of its kind".

References

External links

www.marckuchner.com

www.diskdetective.org
* NASA webpage. http://eud.gsfc.nasa.gov/Marc.Kuchner/home.html
Marketing For Scientists
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kuchner, Marc 1972 births Living people American astronomers NASA astrophysicists Goddard Space Flight Center Harvard University alumni California Institute of Technology alumni Scientists from Montreal