Jeremiah P. Ostriker

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Jeremiah (Jerry) Paul Ostriker (b. 1937) is a distinguished astrophysicist at Princeton University. He received his B.A. from Harvard, his Ph.D at the University of Chicago, and then carried out post-doctoral work at Cambridge. From 1971 to 1995, Ostriker was a professor at Princeton, and served as Provost there from 1995 to 2001. From 2001 to 2003, he was appointed as Plumian Professorship of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy at Cambridge. He has since returned to Princeton.

Ostriker has been very influential in advancing the theory that most of the mass in the universe is not visible at all, but consists of dark matter. Ostriker's research has also focused on the interstellar medium.

He married noted poet and essayist Alicia Ostriker in 1959.

[edit] Recent publications

• New Light on Dark Matter, Science, 300, pp 1909-1914 (2003)
• The Probability Distribution Function of Light in the Universe: Results from Hydrodynamic Simulations, Astrophysical Journal 597, 1 (2003)
• Cosmic Mach Number as a Function of Overdensity and Galaxy Age, Astrophysical Journal, 553, 513 (2001)
• Collisional Dark Matter and the Origin of Massive Black Holes, Physical Review Letters, 84, 5258-5260 (2000).
• Hydrodynamics of Accretion onto Black Holes, Adv. Space Res., 7, 951-960 (1998).

[edit] Awards

• Helen B. Warner Prize for Astronomy of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) (1972)
• Henry Norris Russell Lectureship of the AAS (1980)
• National Medal of Science by U.S. President Bill Clinton (2000)
• Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (2004)