Sandra Moore Faber
Personal Information
Born: 1944
Country of Birth: USA
Nationality: USA
Ethnicity: White
Education
Swarthmore College BA Physics 1966; Harvard University PhD Astronomy 1972
Professional Life
Field of Study: Astrophysics
Institution/Corporation: UC Santa Cruz; Lick Observatory
Degrees & Memberships: Honorary Degrees: Swarthmore College (1986) Williams College (1997) University of Chicago (2006) University of Pennsylvania (2010) University of Michigan (2011); Member: American Academy of Arts & Sciences (1989) American Philosophical Society (2001) Harvard Board of Overseers (2006) Legacy Fellow American Astronomical Society (2020) Board of Trustees Carnegie Institute for Science*National Academy of Sciences (1985) American Association for the Advancement of Science*Sigma Xi(1966) Phi Beta Kappa (1966)
Awards & Achievements
Awards: 2012 Bruce Medal, Astronomical Society of the Pacific; 2012 National Medal of Science; 1985 Dannie Heineman Prize for Astrophysics; 2012 Karl Schwarzschild Medal, German Astronomical Society; 2009 Bower Award, Franklin Institute; 2017 Cosmology Prize, Peter Gruber Foundation; 2020 Gold Medal, Royal Astronomical Society; 1977 Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship; 1978 Bart J. Bok Prize, Harvard University; 2005 Medaille de l'Institute d'Astrophysique de Paris; 2006 Harvard Centennial Medal; 2018 Magellanic Premium Medal, American Philosophical Society
Achievements: developed the 1st comprehensive model of universe formation known as the cold dark matter model; helped design the Kech telescope in Hawaii; co-discoverer of the Faber-Jackson relation with Robert Jackson-a link between the velocity dispersions in elliptical galaxies & their luminosities; late 1980s involved in 8-year program called "7 Samurai" a collaboration which attempted to catalogue the size & orbital speeds of 400 galaxies (goal not met) but did develop a way to estimate the distance to any galaxy; 1990 was part of the team that diagnosed a flaw in the optics of Hubble Space Telescope as spherical aberration; principal investigator of the Nuker Team which used Hubble to search for supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies; teamed with other scientists to create CANDELS program-the largest survey of the universe taken by the Hubble Telescope; led the development of DEIMOS instrument on the Keck telescopes to obtain spectra of cosmologically distant galaxies
With George Blumenthal, Joel Primack, & Martin Rees was an early pioneer in developing a model of galaxy formation based on cold dark matter
1st female to join the Lick Observatory
Instrumental in developing the Keck telescopes in Hawaii (1985); advocated for the use of large optical telescopes all over the world
Co-discoverer of Faber-Jackson relation with Robert Jackson; it's a link between the velocity dispersion in elliptical galaxies & their luminosities
Established a way to estimate the distance to any galaxy