Robin M. Canup (born November 20, 1968) is an American astrophysicist. Her main area of research concerns the origins of planets and satellites. In 2003, Canup was awarded the Harold C. Urey Prize. In April, 2022, Canup presented the findings of the

Planetary Science Decadal Survey The Planetary Science Decadal Survey is a publication of the United States National Research Council produced for NASA and other United States Government Agencies such as the National Science Foundation.National Academy of Sciences, National Acade ...

as co-chair of the Survey Steering Committee with Philip R. Christensen.

Biography

She received her B.S. from

Duke University Duke University is a private research university in Durham, North Carolina. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco and electric power industrialist James ...

and her PhD from the

University of Colorado at Boulder The University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder, CU, or Colorado) is a public research university in Boulder, Colorado. Founded in 1876, five months before Colorado became a state, it is the flagship university of the University of Colorado sys ...

. Canup is known for her research based upon the

giant impact hypothesis The giant-impact hypothesis, sometimes called the Big Splash, or the Theia Impact, suggests that the Moon formed from the ejecta of a collision between the proto-Earth and a Mars-sized planet, approximately 4.5 billion years ago, in the Hadean ...

, using intensive modeling to simulate how planetary collisions unfold. In 2012, Canup first published a refinement to the giant impact hypothesis, arguing that the Moon and the Earth formed in a series of steps that started with a massive collision of two planetary bodies, each larger than Mars, which then re-collided to form what we now call Earth. After the re-collision, Earth was surrounded by a disk of material, which combined to form the Moon. She has written a book on the origin of the Earth and Moon. Canup has also published research describing a giant impact origin for

Pluto Pluto (minor-planet designation: 134340 Pluto) is a dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt, a ring of trans-Neptunian object, bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune. It is the ninth-largest and tenth-most-massive known object to directly orbit the S ...

and

Charon In Greek mythology, Charon or Kharon (; grc, Χάρων) is a psychopomp, the ferryman of Hades, the Greek underworld. He carries the souls of those who have been given funeral rites across the rivers Acheron and Styx, which separate the wo ...

. Canup is an accomplished ballet dancer and danced the lead role in ''

Coppélia ''Coppélia'' (sometimes subtitled: ''La Fille aux Yeux d'Émail'' (The Girl with the Enamel Eyes)) is a comic ballet from 1870 originally choreographed by Arthur Saint-Léon to the music of Léo Delibes, with libretto by Charles-Louis-Éti ...

'' in the Boulder Ballet one week after finishing her dissertation.

Selected works

* * (member of Space Studies board)

References

External links

* from National Academy of Sciences
Interview with Robin Canup for NOVA series: To the Moon
WGBH Educational Foundation, raw footage, 1998
“NOVA; To the Moon; Interview with Robin M. Canup, Astrophysicist,”
1998-00-00, WGBH, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. {{DEFAULTSORT:Canup, Robin M. Living people 1968 births Duke University alumni University of Colorado alumni American women astronomers Place of birth missing (living people) Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Planetary scientists Women planetary scientists