Topic: John Bahcall: The Godfather of Solar Neutrinos
Dr. Neta Bahcall, Princeton University astrophysicist and wife of the late John Bahcall, will speak on his extraordinary scientific legacy, alongside highlights of her own pioneering research on dark matter and the large-scale structure of the universe.
John Bahcall was one of the towering figures of 20th century astrophysics. He pioneered the theory of Solar Neutrinos, which led to the first detection of neutrinos from the Sun in the 1960’s at the Homestake mine by Ray Davis. Their joint work proved -- for the first time — how the Sun shines. Neta will recount John and Ray's remarkable scientific journey to reveal the mystery of solar neutrinos. John’s creation of the Standard Solar Model, combined with decades of experimental results, ultimately revealed — after nearly 40 years — that neutrinos have mass, contrary to all expectations. These discoveries were recognized with two Nobel prizes.
John’s work launched the field of Neutrino Astrophysics, which continues to flourish today at SURF and around the world. His legacy extends to foundational contributions in galactic and extragalactic astrophysics, his visionary role in the design and advocacy of the Hubble Space Space Telescope, his leadership of the astronomical community, and his dedicated mentorship of generations of young scientists.
Neta will also briefly discuss the ‘dark side of the universe’ — dark matter and dark energy — which together make up most of the mass-energy in the cosmos.
Speaker: Dr. Neta Bahcall
Neta A. Bahcall is the Eugene Higgins Professor of Astrophysics at Princeton University. She is Director of the Undergraduate Program in Astrophysics, recipient of the 2024 Henry Norris Russell award of the American Astronomical Society, the 2021 President’s Distinguished Teaching Award of Princeton University, past Director of the Council on Science and Technology of Princeton University, and is an elected member of the US National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Legacy Fellow of the American Astronomical Society, Past Chair of the Astronomy Section of the National Academy of Sciences, Editorial Board member of the PNAS, and past Vice-President of the AAS.
Bahcall's work focuses on addressing questions such as: What is the large-scale structure of our Universe? How did structure form and evolve? How much dark matter exists in the Universe and where is it located? Bahcall uses different methods and a variety of tracers to answer these questions, including galaxies, clusters of galaxies, superclusters, and quasars. She combines observational data from large-scale surveys (such as the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and others) and other observations to determine the large-scale structure of the universe and its properties and compare it with those expected from cosmological simulations.
You can register for this talk here.
