Following a bachelor's degree from Princeton, Michael got his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1994. His thesis work was on the Io plasma torus, and was supervised by Hyron Spinrad. He then did postdoctoral work at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, before receiving the offer from Caltech.
Mike is known for work on Titan using Keck's AO camera. He mentored Adam Burgasser in the discovery and study of T dwarfs. In recent years he is best known for the discovery of large Kuiper Belt objects, including 2003UB313 (now named Eris), which from HST imaging was found to be 5% larger than Pluto. This result triggered the IAU's reconsideration of Pluto's status as a planet, as either there were now ten planets or only eight. The IAU decided to invent the term "dwarf planet" to cover such icey objects in the outer solar system, much smaller than terrestrial planets and many giant moons in the solar system. It is likely that this topic will be the main theme of Mike's lecture.
For those of you not familiar with this situation, Marc Aaronson came to Steward Observatory as a postdoc after his degree at Harvard in 1977. He rose to the level of Associate Professor in 1983. His astronomical research focussed on some of the most important problems of observational cosmology: the cosmic distance scale, the age of the Universe, the large-scale motion of matter, the distribution of invisible mass in the Universe. He was to be PI of the Hubble Space Telescope key project to determine the Hubble constant from observations of Cepheids in galaxies. This task devolved to Rob Kennicutt and Wendy Freedman. Marc also made important contributions to our understanding of stellar populations in the more local Universe, such as in the Large Magellanic Cloud. In recognition of his research achievements, Aaronson was awarded the George Van Biesbroeck Award by the University of Arizona in 1981, the Bart J. Bok Prize by Harvard University in 1983, and the Newton Lacy Pierce Prize by the American Astronomical Society in 1984.
Above all, Marc displayed a passionate love for astronomy which serves as a lasting inspiration to his many colleagues, students and friends. Marc died in 1987 in a freak accident while doing what he loved most, making astronomical observations. He was only 37 years old. The Aaronson Memorial Lectureship was set up to bring to Tucson a person of similar age who has a similar passionate love for astronomy, and who has contributed an important body of work in at least one area about which they can give a public talk and a colloquium.
R. Kirshner 1989 kirshner@cfa.harvard.edu Former President AAS
K. Freeman 1990 kcf@mso.anu.edu.au Heinemann Prize of AAS/AIP, 1999
J. Huchra 1992 huchra@cfa.harvard.edu Incoming President AAS
N. Scoville 1993 nzs@astro.caltech.edu Past Director, Owens Valley Radio Observatory,
Caltech Executive Off. Astronomy
W. Freedman 1994 wendy@ociw.edu Carnegie Observatories Director
A. Tyson 1996 tyson@physics.ucdavis.edu Leading LSST
J. Mather 1998 john.c.mather@nasa.gov Nobel Physics Laureate 2006
B. Paczynski 1999 unfortunately deceased
E. van Dishoeck 2001 ewine@strw.leidenuniv.nl Director, Sackler Laboratory for Astrophysics,
Leiden University
G. Marcy 2002 gmarcy@astro.berkeley.edu Shaw Laureate in 2005
L. Page 2004 page@pupgg.princeton.edu Major player with WMAP
B. Schmidt 2005 brian@mso.anu.edu.au Shaw Laureate in 2006
A. Ghez 2007 ghez@astro.ucla.edu AAS Pierce Prize 1998, like Marc
deisenstein Daniel Eisenstein dzaritsky Dennis Zaritsky ghez@astro.ucla.edu Andrea Ghez (previous awardee is on next committee) jbechtold Jill Bechtold jliebert James Liebert mkun@adelphia.net Marianne Kun (Marc's widow, nonvoting) najita@noao.edu Joan Najita kcook@igpp.ucllnl.org Kem Cook (Marc's last student) sjones Sharon Jones (Peter Strittmatter's exec asst., nonvoting)