Carnegie Institution of Washington

Carnegie Institution of Washington

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Contact Wendy Freedman at the Carnegie Observatories at 626-304-0204, e-mail at Wendy@ociw.edu; or Nancy Davis in Observatories External Affairs at 626-304-0270, e-mail ndavis@ociw.edu

Wendy Freedman of the Carnegie Observatories Elected to National Academy of Sciences

Pasadena, California, May, 5. One of the world’s premier astronomers, Wendy Freedman, director of the Carnegie Observatories in Pasadena, California, was among 72 individuals chosen this year for membership in the National Academy of Sciences—one of the most selective and highest honors available to scientists and engineers in the U.S. Members are chosen “in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievement in original research.” The election was conducted in Washington, D.C., on April 29, during the academy’s 140th annual meeting and brought the active roster of the prestigious cadre to 1,922.

Freedman has been part of the Observatories’ research faculty for almost two decades. Her work as a leader on the Hubble Space Telescope Key Project to determine the rate at which the universe is expanding has been one of her many extraordinary achievements. After earning a Ph.D. in astronomy and astrophysics from the University of Toronto, Dr. Freedman joined Carnegie Observatories in Pasadena as a postdoctoral fellow in 1984. She became a faculty member of the scientific staff there three years later and director of the Observatories in March 2003. Studies of the extragalactic distance scale, galactic evolution, and stellar populations have won her such honors as the Marc Aaronson Lectureship and Prize, The Centennial Lectureship of the American Physical Society, The Darwin Lectureship of the Royal Astronomical Society, and the Cosmos Club Award. Last year, she received the American Philosophical Society’s Magellanic Prize for her leadership in bringing observational cosmology into the 21st century.

The National Academy of Sciences was incorporated by congressional act in 1863 to advise the federal government on science and technology matters—a role that continues today. The Carnegie Observatories was founded by the great pioneer in astrophysics, George Ellery Hale, in 1904.

The Carnegie Institution of Washington (www.CarnegieInstitution.org) ,a pioneering force in basic scientific research since 1902, is a private, nonprofit organization with six research departments in the U.S.: Plant Biology, Global Ecology, Embryology, the Geophysical Laboratory, the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism, and the Carnegie Observatories.