Interview with Brian Schmidt, Distinguished Professor and Vice Chancellor and President of the Australian National University. Schmidt surveys the Covid crisis from his perspective at ANU, and he describes his current interests in cosmology. He recounts his childhood in Montana and Alaska in support of his father’s career in fisheries biology, and he describes his undergraduate education as a dual major in physics and astronomy at the University of Arizona. Schmidt describes the opportunities that led to his graduate work at Harvard, where he worked under the direction of Bob Kirshner and where he met and developed a formative relationship with Adam Riess on supernovae research. He explains his decision to remain at Harvard for his postdoctoral research and he narrates the origins of the High-Z collaboration and its interactions with Saul Perlmutter’s team at Berkeley. Schmidt describes his postdoctoral appointment at ANU as leader of High-Z, and he describes how the collaboration discovered the accelerating expansion of the universe and the process of communicating its findings. He describes the “buzz” leading to the Nobel Prize and his subsequent focus on the SkyMapper project. Schmidt discusses his responsibilities as Vice Chancellor which overlap strongly with Australian national policy, and he describes how he sees the reality of climate change in his 21 years of grape growing. At the end of the interview, Schmidt reflects on how the High-Z discovery has changed astronomy broadly, and he conveys a sense of wonder at the accidental nature by which the team arrived at its discovery.
Brian Schmidt studied as an undergraduate at the University of Arizona, where he worked on discovering supernovae with the CCD Transit Instrument under John McGraw. He continued his graduate studies in Astronomy at Harvard University, with Robert Kirshner as his thesis advisor, from 1989-1993. He stayed on at Harvard as a postdoctoral fellow before moving to The Australian National University in 1995. When he attended a summer school in Les Houches, France, in 1990, on Supernova, he met many of the supernova greats and marks this as his induction into supernova astronomy. Schmidt started the High-z Supernova Search Team in 1994 at the age of 27. He wrote the supernova search software, much of the simulation software, as well as one of several cosmological fitting software used by the team and led them to their 1998 discovery of the accelerating universe. In this series of interviews, Schmidt discusses the spaces of scientific work, supernovae as scientific objects, and scientific visualization. Schmidt’s outstanding good humor is infectious, and he is an astronomer and an observer highly respected within the profession.
Brian Schmidt studied as an undergraduate at the University of Arizona, where he worked on discovering supernovae with the CCD Transit Instrument under John McGraw. He continued his graduate studies in Astronomy at Harvard University, with Robert Kirshner as his thesis advisor, from 1989-1993. He stayed on at Harvard as a postdoctoral fellow before moving to The Australian National University in 1995. When he attended a summer school in Les Houches, France, in 1990, on Supernova, he met many of the supernova greats and marks this as his induction into supernova astronomy. Schmidt started the High-z Supernova Search Team in 1994 at the age of 27. He wrote the supernova search software, much of the simulation software, as well as one of several cosmological fitting software used by the team and led them to their 1998 discovery of the accelerating universe. In this series of interviews, Schmidt discusses the spaces of scientific work, supernovae as scientific objects, and scientific visualization. Schmidt’s outstanding good humor is infectious, and he is an astronomer and an observer highly respected within the profession.
Topics discussed include: De Vaucouleur's family background; his introduction to the French Astronomical Society; his interest in astronomy; his education and classes he took in spectroscopy; Jean Cabannes; Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin; Daniel Barbier; Henri Mineur; Nick Mayall; Bernard Lyot; Harlow Shapley; Institute of Astrophysics; E. C. Slipher; Physics Research Laboratory at the Sorbonne; G. Vakuler; Paul Couderc; Lick Observatory; Donald Menzel; Mount Stromlo Observatory; Arthur Hogg; Pierre Querin; Frank Kerr; Magellanic clouds; Colin Gum; Bill Buscombe; Ernst Opik; Vera Rubin; Lowell Observatory; Gerry Kron; Fritz Zwicky; Albert Wilson; Roger Putnam; Bart Bok; Australian National University; Ed Carpenter and V. M. Slipher.
Topics discussed include: De Vaucouleur's family background; his introduction to the French Astronomical Society; his interest in astronomy; his education and classes he took in spectroscopy; Jean Cabannes; Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin; Daniel Barbier; Henri Mineur; Nick Mayall; Bernard Lyot; Harlow Shapley; Institute of Astrophysics; E. C. Slipher; Physics Research Laboratory at the Sorbonne; G. Vakuler; Paul Couderc; Lick Observatory; Donald Menzel; Mount Stromlo Observatory; Arthur Hogg; Pierre Querin; Frank Kerr; Magellanic clouds; Colin Gum; Bill Buscombe; Ernst Opik; Vera Rubin; Lowell Observatory; Gerry Kron; Fritz Zwicky; Albert Wilson; Roger Putnam; Bart Bok; Australian National University; Ed Carpenter and V. M. Slipher.
In this interview Stephen Buckman discusses topics such as: Gaseous Electronics Conference; Arthur Phelps; Robert Crompton; atomic collision physics; American Physical Society: Division of Atomic Molecular Optical Physics; his education at Flinders University; working at Australia National University; John Lowke; William Allis.
