Meszaros named holder of Eberly family chair in astronomy, astrophysics

Peter Meszaros, distinguished professor of astronomy and astrophysics and of physics, has been named the holder of the Eberly chair of astronomy and astrophysics. He was appointed to the chair by the Office of the President, based on the recommendations of colleagues and the dean, in recognition of his national and international reputation for excellence in research and teaching.

Meszaros is a theoretical astrophysicist whose research involves high-energy astrophysics, gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), cosmology and neutron stars. He and his collaborators developed the cosmological-fireball-shock scenario, the most widely accepted interpretation of gamma-ray bursts. His predictions of the properties of burst afterglows at X-ray and optical wavelengths were confirmed by observations made in 1997 with the Bepp-SAX satellite. Since that time, more than 100 afterglows have been studied in detail, and an increasing number of new and precise afterglow detections, locations and follow-up observations are being obtained with the Swift multi-wavelength GRB satellite.

Launched on Nov. 20, 2004, the Swift satellite is designed to "swiftly" locate these very brief gamma-ray bursts-mysterious explosions from deep space that outshine the entire universe before rapidly fading away, sometimes in just a few seconds. Swift is an international collaboration among the National Atmospheric and Space Administration (NASA) and its partners in Great Britain, Italy and the United States, with Penn State as the lead university partner and home to the Mission Operations Center. Meszaros serves as the science and theory lead for the Swift consortium.

Meszaros received his master's degree in physics from the National University of Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1967 and his doctoral degree in astronomy from the University of California at Berkeley in 1972. After appointments as a research associate at Princeton University and a research fellow at the University of Cambridge in England, he was a staff scientist at the Max-Planck Institute for Astrophysics from 1975 to 1983. He joined the Penn State faculty as an associate professor in 1983, was promoted to professor in 1987 and was named distinguished professor in 2000. He served as head of the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics from 1993 to 2003.

As part of this appointment, Meszaros will receive research funds from an endowment given to Penn State by the Eberly Family Trust. In 1986, the Eberly Family Trust gave $10 million to establish a chair in each department in the Eberly College of Science, to create endowments for biotechnology and to provide funding for the Hobby-Eberly Telescope.

Peter Meszaros is the holder of the Eberly family chair in astronomy and physics. Credit: Penn StateCreative Commons

Last Updated November 18, 2010