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Samuel H. Moseley Maniac Lecture

Personal Photograph

Dr. Samuel H. Mosely is a senior astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. Moseley’s accomplishments include the inventions of superconducting imaging arrays for astronomy, ranging from sub-millimeter bolometers to energy sensitive X-ray microcalorimeters, and even dark matter detectors, as well as microshutter arrays for the James Webb Space Telescope near-infrared spectrometer, which promise to enable detailed study of the first galaxies to form in the universe after the big bang. Before the Webb, Moseley worked extensively on COBE as a member of its Science Working Group. The satellite made groundbreaking measurements of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation, which show the universe soon after the big bang. Astrophysicists John Mather and George Smoot won the 2006 Nobel Prize in physics for this work. He has also worked on the many programs that have either flown or are expected to fly: the Kuiper Airborne Observatory, the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA), NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope and Japan’s Suzaku (ASTRO-E2) mission. Moseley received his bachelor’s degree from Connecticut College, his master’s degree and doctorate from University of Chicago. He is a member of the American Physical Society and the American Astronomical Society.