Saul Perlmutter

Saul Perlmutter was born on September 22, 1959, in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois. He would go on to become a renowned astrophysicist best known for his work in cosmology, particularly his role in the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the universe through the observation of distant supernovae.

In 1981, Saul Perlmutter graduated from Harvard University with an A.B. in physics. During his time at Harvard, he was attracted to the practical and theoretical aspects of astrophysics, setting the stage for his future research in this field.

Saul Perlmutter earned his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of California, Berkeley in 1986. His doctoral work focused on astrophysics, and it was at UC Berkeley where he began his long-term association with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

In 1998, Saul Perlmutter, along with his teams, the Supernova Cosmology Project and the High-z Supernova Search Team, announced the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the universe. This groundbreaking discovery was based on observations of Type Ia supernovae and suggested the presence of a mysterious force, dark energy, counteracting the gravitational pull.

In 2006, Saul Perlmutter and his team, the Supernova Cosmology Project, were awarded the Gruber Cosmology Prize. This prize acknowledged their discovery of the accelerating expansion of the universe, a breakthrough that had profound implications for the field of cosmology.

Saul Perlmutter was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2011, along with Brian P. Schmidt and Adam G. Riess, for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the universe through observations of distant supernovae. This discovery was pivotal in advancing our understanding of the universe and the presence of dark energy.

In 2013, Saul Perlmutter was appointed to the Franklin W. and Karen Weber Dabby Chair in Physics at the University of California, Berkeley, also known as the Einstein Chair. This position recognized his outstanding contributions to physics and cosmology, particularly his work on the accelerating universe.

In 2018, Saul Perlmutter was named one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people. His research on dark energy and the acceleration of the universe has profoundly shaped contemporary cosmology and has had a lasting impact on our understanding of the universe.

In 2019, Saul Perlmutter was elected as a member of the National Academy of Sciences, one of the highest honors a scientist can receive. This election recognized his significant contributions to the field of astrophysics, particularly his work on the accelerating expansion of the universe.

Saul Perlmutter co-received the Wilkinson Prize for Numerical Software in 2020. This award recognized the development of SHTOOLS, a comprehensive open-source library for spherical harmonics computations and representing his active contributions to computational methods in theoretical physics.