Nicholas Zabriskie "Nick" Scoville is the Francis L. Moseley Professor of 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 ...

Education

Scoville earned his B.A. and Ph.D. from

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

Research

Scoville's research interests include interstellar molecular clouds and star formation activity within these clouds, interacting ultraluminous-infrared

galaxies A galaxy is a system of stars, stellar remnants, interstellar gas, dust, dark matter, bound together by gravity. The word is derived from the Greek ' (), literally 'milky', a reference to the Milky Way galaxy that contains the Solar System. ...

and active galactic nuclei. He led the Cosmic Evolution Survey (COSMOS) that is among the best studied fields in extragalactic astronomy and one of the largest galaxy surveys executed by the Hubble Space Telescope. Scoville's major research investigations include : first mapping of CO emission in the Galactic plane and discovery of the 5 kpc molecular gas ring (with Phil Solomon); first theoretical analysis of line photon trapping in the molecular emission lines (with Solomon); first recognition that the molecular gas cloud were self-gravitating (rather than being galactic spiral arms); theory of mass-loss winds from red giant stars and their molecular emission lines (with Peter Godreich); the UMass-Stonybrook galactic CO survey (with Dave Sanders, Phil Solomon and Dan Clemens), the UMass extragalactic CO survey (with Judy Young and students); High Resolution IR spectroscopy (with Don Hall, Susan Kleinman and Steve Ridgway); observations and theoretical modelling of Ultra Luminous IR galaxies and the evolution of starburst galaxies to quasars (with Dave Sanders, Colin Norman and others); imaging of local ULIRG galaxies and the Galactic Center with the Hubble Space Telescope NICMOS camera (with Roger Thompson, Aaron Evans and Susan Stolovy); founder and leader of the Cosmic Evolution Evolution Survey (COSMOS); and the evolution of interstellar gas and dust in galaxies from z = 0.1 to 5 (with the COSMOS team). Scoville's main hobby outside astronomy is steel sculptural design and construction and welding. He also works on the

Hubble Heritage Project The Hubble Heritage Project was founded in 1998 by Keith Noll, Howard Bond, Forrest Hamilton, Anne Kinney, and Zoltan Levay at the Space Telescope Science Institute. The team released, on an almost monthly basis, pictures of celestial objects like ...

, and the

Cosmic Evolution Survey The Cosmic Evolution Survey (COSMOS) is a Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Treasury Project to survey a two square degree equatorial field with the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS). The largest survey ever undertaken by HST, the project incorpora ...

a multi-wavelength deep-field study of galaxies in the early universe. While at the University of Massachusetts, Scoville was the associate director of

Five College Radio Astronomy Observatory The Five College Radio Astronomical Observatory (FCRAO) was a radio astronomy observatory located on a peninsula in the Quabbin Reservoir. It was sited in the town of New Salem, Massachusetts on land that was originally part of Prescott, Massa ...

. At

he was the director of

Owens Valley Radio Observatory Owens Valley Radio Observatory (OVRO) is a radio astronomy observatory located near Big Pine, California (US) in Owens Valley. It lies east of the Sierra Nevada, approximately north of Los Angeles and southeast of Bishop. It was established in 19 ...

from 1986 through 1996 Scoville developed the MIR software package for calibrating data from the OVRO Millimeter Array, which was later used by other astronomical radio interferometers. The

main belt asteroid The asteroid belt is a torus-shaped region in the Solar System, located roughly between the orbits of the planets Jupiter and Mars. It contains a great many solid, irregularly shaped bodies, of many sizes, but much smaller than planets, called ...

25746 Nickscoville is named after Scoville. He was elected as a member of the National Academy in 2022. In 2021, Scoville was awarded the

Henry Norris Russell Lectureship The Henry Norris Russell Lectureship is awarded each year by the American Astronomical Society in recognition of a lifetime of excellence in astronomical research. The idea for the lectureship came from then society President Harlow Shapley in 1945, ...

by 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 ...

"For contributions in understanding molecular gas and star formation and for his work in inspiring generations of early career astronomers".

References

American astronomers Living people California Institute of Technology faculty Year of birth missing (living people) Columbia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni Columbia College (New York) alumni {{US-astronomer-stub