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Movements, leaders, victories and the continuing fight for equality.
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Explore the people, places, events, achievements, struggles and stories that shaped our journey.
Movements, leaders, victories and the continuing fight for equality.
Innovation, patents, science, technology and world-changing contributions.
Pioneers, champions, Negro Leagues, records, activism and excellence.
Meet the people whose lives, choices and achievements shaped the journey.
Black towns, communities, institutions and places where history happened.
Moments that changed communities, movements, institutions and the nation.
In 1968 Shirley Chisholm became the first Black woman elected to the United States Congress. In 1972 she launched a campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, breaking another political barrier.
MORE →Reflects the personal views, recollections, and perspective of the author, Mike Davis.
This is a personal recollection on the Move fire on May 13, 1985
Debra Fischer | |
|---|---|
 Fischer in 2004 | |
| Born | 1953 (age 72–73) |
| Education | University of Iowa, San Francisco State University, University of California, Santa Cruz |
| Known for | Astronomy, Exoplanetology |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Astronomy |
| Workplaces | Yale University |
Debra Ann Fischer (born 1953) is an American astronomer and professor emerita at Yale University.[1] She is known for her work in the discovery and characterization of exoplanets using the radial velocity method.[2]
Fischer has been involved in the detection of hundreds of exoplanets and has contributed to the development of high-precision spectrographs used in exoplanet research.[3]
Fischer received her degree in nursing from the University of Iowa in 1975, a masters of science in physics from San Francisco State University in 1992, and her PhD in astrophysics from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1998.[2]
Following her PhD, Fischer worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Berkeley. She was a faculty member at San Francisco State University from 2003 to 2008 before joining Yale University in 2009. She was a Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study from 2009 – 2010.[4]
At Yale, Fischer held a primary appointment in Astronomy, and secondary appointments in Earth & Planetary Sciences, and Statistics & Data Science. Fischer served as Dean of Academic Affairs from 2018 to 2021.[5] Fischer served as Division Director of Astronomy at the National Science Foundation from 2021 - 2023.[2]
Fischer began exoplanet research in 1997 using Doppler spectroscopy and was part of the team that discovered the first known multi-planet system around the star Upsilon Andromedae in 1999.[6]
She quantified a correlation between the chemical composition of host stars and the formation of orbiting gas giant planets.[7][8]
She co-led the N2K Consortium with Gregory Laughlin, detecting dozens of exoplanets around metal-rich stars at Keck Observatory, the Subaru telescope and the Magellan Telescopes.[9]
Fischer was the principal investigator for the CHIRON spectrograph[10] at CTIO, VUES [11] at Vilnius University, and EXPRES [12] at the Lowell Discovery Telescope. These instruments aim to improve measurement precision in radial velocity studies to enable the detection of small amplitude radial velocity signals from rocky planets.
In 2010 with the Oxford Zooniverse team, Fischer co‑founded Planet Hunters, a citizen science project for exoplanet discovery. In 2019, she co-founded Astronomers for Planet Earth, an international initiative aimed at mobilizing the astronomy community in addressing climate change. As Division Director of Astronomy at NSF, she emphasized sustainability in scientific operations and the importance of preparing energy budgets for research facilities.[13]
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Source: Wikipedia. Article content is retrieved live through the MediaWiki API.
Debra Ann Fischer (born 1953) is an American astronomer and professor emerita at Yale University. She is known for her work in the discovery and characterization of exoplanets using the radial velocity method. Fischer has been involved in the detection of hundreds of exoplanets and has contributed to the development of high-precision spectrographs used in exoplanet research.
Geoffrey William Marcy (born September 29, 1954) is an American astronomer. He was an early influence in the field of exoplanet detection, discovery, and characterization. Marcy was a professor of astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley, and an adjunct professor of physics and astronomy at San Francisco State University. Marcy and his research teams discovered many extrasolar planets, including 70 out of the first 100 known exoplanets and also the first planetary system around a Sun-like star, Upsilon Andromedae. Marcy was a co-investigator on the NASA Kepler space telescope mission. His collaborators have included R. Paul Butler, Debra Fischer and Steven S. Vogt, Jason Wright, Andrew Howard, Katie Peek, John Johnson, Erik Petigura, Lauren Weiss, Lea Hirsch and the Kepler Science Team. Following an investigation for sexual harassment in 2015, Marcy resigned his position at the University of California, Berkeley.
Planet Hunters is a citizen science project to find exoplanets using human eyes. It does this by having users analyze data from the NASA Kepler space telescope and the NASA Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite. It was launched by a team led by Debra Fischer at Yale University, as part of the Zooniverse project.
HD 40979 b is an extrasolar planet orbiting the star HD 40979, was detected from the Lick and Keck observatories and photometric observations at Fairborn Observatory reveal low-amplitude brightness variations in HD 40979. It is thought to be a large gas giant planet. It was discovered in 2002 by Debra Fischer.
Before the 1921 destruction of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, Black residents had created a remarkable center of business and community life. The district included stores, professional offices, entertainment venues and homes owned by Black citizens. Understanding Greenwood means learning what was built—not only what was burned.
MORE →Madam C.J. Walker
