Charles Alcock

Charles Alcock is the Director of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (the “CfA”). His research concerns the determination the composition of cosmic dark matter, and innovative surveys of the outer solar system. Alcock was educated at the University of Auckland, New Zealand and at the California Institute of Technology. He has previously been a long-term member of the Institute for Advanced Study (1978-1980), an Associate Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1981-1986), a physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (1987-2000), and a Professor of Astronomy and Physics at the University of Pennsylvania (2001-2004). He assumed his position as Director of the CfA in 2004, and in addition was the Acting Undersecretary for Science at the Smithsonian Institution from April 2008 until August 2009. Professor Alcock received the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ernest O. Lawrence Award for Physics in 1996 and the Beatrice M. Tinsley Award of the American Astronomical Society in 2000. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2001 and to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2006.