Naomi McClure-Griffiths (born July 11, 1975) is an American-born astrophysicist and

radio astronomer Radio astronomy is a subfield of astronomy that studies celestial objects at radio frequencies. The first detection of radio waves from an astronomical object was in 1933, when Karl Jansky at Bell Telephone Laboratories reported radiation coming f ...

who researches and lives in Australia. In 2004, she discovered a new spiral arm in the

Milky Way The Milky Way is the galaxy that includes our Solar System, with the name describing the galaxy's appearance from Earth: a hazy band of light seen in the night sky formed from stars that cannot be individually distinguished by the naked eye ...

galaxy. She was awarded the Prime Minister's Malcolm McIntosh Prize for Physical Scientist in 2006 and in 2015 was honored for her research in physics by receipt of the Pawsey Medal from the Australian Academy of Science. This was followed by an

Australian Laureate Fellowship The Australian Laureate Fellowship is an Australian professorial research fellowship awarded by the Australian Research Council. Up to 17 fellows are chosen each year for five-year awards. Kathleen Fitzpatrick and Georgina Sweet fellowships In 201 ...

in 2021, while in 2022 she was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science.

Biography

Naomi Melissa McClure-Griffiths was born on July 11, 1975 in

Atlanta Atlanta ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is the seat of Fulton County, the most populous county in Georgia, but its territory falls in both Fulton and DeKalb counties. With a population of 498,715 ...

Georgia. She entered

Oberlin College Oberlin College is a Private university, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college and conservatory of music in Oberlin, Ohio. It is the oldest Mixed-sex education, coeducational liberal arts college in the United S ...

in 1993 where she studied both French and physics and then in 1997 entered the

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Tw ...

to study astrophysics. During her PhD, she participated in the International Galactic Plane Survey, leading the Southern Galactic Plane Survey to map the hydrogen gas in the Milky Way. In 2001, she relocated permanently to Australia taking up a post doctoral fellowship at the Australia Telescope National Facility as a CSIRO Bolton Fellow. During her Fellowship McClure-Griffiths studied the movement of interstellar gases and how explosions of stars create bubbles or shells which push the gasses out of the galaxy. In their movement, chimneys of empty space may be created, two of which were discovered by McClure-Griffiths. One of the chimneys she discovered is the only known chimney to "extend through the top and bottom of the galactic plane". Then in 2004, she discovered a new spiral arm during her senior postdoctoral position. The new arm was shown on previous mappings but never identified nor given a name. McCure-Griffiths created a computer model to confirm its existence which was confirmed by her team. In 2006, she was honored with the Malcolm McIntosh Prize for Physical Scientist of the year one of the annual prizes awarded as the Prime Minister's Prizes for Science. As Principal Investigator she initiated the Galactic All Sky Survey that same year and then in 2007, she was the recipient of the Powerhouse Wizard Award from the Powerhouse Museum at the Sydney Observatory. McClure-Griffiths' team took part in the international effort to complete the mapping of the Milky Way's magnetic fields in 2011. In 2015, she left CSIRO and joined the Australian National University as a professor conducting her research from the Mount Stromlo Observatory. That same year, her work in physics was recognized by receipt of the Pawsey Medal from the Australian Academy of Science.

Selected works

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References

External links

WorldCat Publications
{{DEFAULTSORT:McClure-Griffiths, Naomi American astrophysicists Australian astrophysicists Women astrophysicists 1975 births Living people Women astronomers Australian women physicists Oberlin College alumni University of Minnesota alumni 21st-century Australian astronomers 21st-century Australian physicists 21st-century Australian women scientists Fellows of the Australian Academy of Science