Adam Riess

Adam Guy Riess (born December 16, 1969) is an American astrophysicist and Bloomberg Distinguished Professor at Johns Hopkins University and the Space Telescope Science Institute. He is known for his research in using supernovae as cosmological probes. Riess shared both the 2006 Shaw Prize in Astronomy and the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics with Saul Perlmutter and Brian P. Schmidt for providing evidence that the expansion of the universe is accelerating.

Adam Riess
Riess in 2011
Born	Adam Guy Riess (1969-12-16) December 16, 1969 (age 53) Washington, D.C., U.S.
Alma mater	Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University
Known for	Accelerating universe / dark energy, Hubble Constant
Spouse	Nancy Joy Schondorf (m. 1998)
Awards	Robert J. Trumpler Award (1999)^[1] Helen B. Warner Prize for Astronomy (2002) Sackler Prize for Physics (2004)^[2] Shaw Prize in Astronomy (2006) Nobel Prize in Physics (2011) Albert Einstein Medal (2011) Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics (2015)
Scientific career
Fields	Physics
Institutions	University of California, Berkeley Johns Hopkins University / Space Telescope Science Institute
Doctoral advisor	Robert Kirshner, William H. Press
Doctoral students	Daniel Scolnic, David Jones, Carolina Huang, D’arcy Kenworthy

Family

Riess was born in Washington, D.C., one of three children.^[3][4] He grew up in Warren, New Jersey, where his father (Naval engineer Michael Riess) owned a frozen-foods distribution company, Bistro International, and his mother (Doris Riess) worked as a clinical psychologist.^[5] Michael Riess (1931–2007) immigrated to the United States with his parents (journalist, war correspondent and author Curt Martin Riess and Ilse Posnansky)^[6] from Germany on the ship SS Europa (1928) in 1936.^[7] Riess is by birth Jewish.^[8] Adam Riess has two sisters – Gail Saltz, a psychiatrist, and Holly Hagerman, an artist. Riess married Nancy Joy Schondorf in 1998.

Education

He attended Watchung Hills Regional High School, graduating in the class of 1988.^[9] He also attended the prestigious New Jersey Governor's School in the Sciences in 1987. Riess then graduated from The Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1992 where he was a member of the Phi Delta Theta fraternity. He received his PhD from Harvard University in 1996; it resulted in measurements of over twenty new Type Ia supernovae and a method to utilize Type Ia supernovae as accurate distance indicators by correcting for intervening dust and intrinsic inhomogeneities. Riess's PhD thesis was supervised by Robert Kirshner and William H. Press and won the Robert J. Trumpler Award in 1999 for PhD theses of unusual importance to astronomy.^[10]

Research

Riess was a Miller Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley from 1996 through 1999, during which period his first seminal paper on the discovery of an accelerating universe was published.^[11] In 1999, he moved to the Space Telescope Science Institute and took up his current position at Johns Hopkins University in 2006. He also sits on the selection committee for the Astronomy award, given under the auspices of the Shaw Prize. In July 2016, Riess was named a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor at Johns Hopkins University for his accomplishments as an interdisciplinary researcher and excellence in teaching the next generation of scholars.^[11] The Bloomberg Distinguished Professorships were established in 2013 by a gift from Michael Bloomberg.^[12]

Riess jointly led the study with Brian Schmidt in 1998 for the High-z Supernova Search Team which first reported evidence that the universe's expansion rate is now accelerating through monitoring of Type Ia supernovae. The team's observations were contrary to the current theory that the expansion of the universe was slowing down; instead, by monitoring the color shifts in the light from supernovae from Earth, they discovered that these billion-year old novae were still accelerating.^[13] This result was also found nearly simultaneously by the Supernova Cosmology Project, led by Saul Perlmutter.^[13] The corroborating evidence between the two competing studies led to the acceptance of the accelerating universe theory, and initiated new research to understand the nature of the universe, such as the existence of dark energy.^[13] The discovery of the accelerating universe was named 'Breakthrough of the Year' by Science magazine in 1998,^[14] and Riess was jointly awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics along with Schmidt and Perlmutter for their groundbreaking work.^[13]

From 2002-2007 Riess led the Higher-Z SN Team which used the Hubble Space Telescope to find dozens of type Ia supernovae at z>1, first demonstrating that the expansion of the Universe was decelerating before it began accelerating and ruling out astrophysical contamination of SN Ia.^[15]

Riess is also known for his efforts to measure the local value of the Hubble constant while leading the SH0ES Team since 2005 with measurements that approach 1% precision and which indicate a discrepancy with the model-based prediction from the CMB, a problem widely known in Cosmology as the Hubble Tension.^[16][17]

Awards and honors

 

Saul Perlmutter, Riess, and Brian P. Schmidt being awarded the 2006 Shaw Prize in Astronomy. The trio would later be awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Riess received the Astronomical Society of the Pacific's Robert J. Trumpler Award in 1999 and Harvard University's Bok Prize in 2001. He won the American Astronomical Society's Helen B. Warner Prize in 2003 and the Raymond and Beverly Sackler Prize in Physics in 2004 for the discovery of cosmic acceleration.^[18]

In 2006, he shared the $1 million Shaw Prize in Astronomy with Saul Perlmutter and Brian P. Schmidt for contributions to the discovery of the acceleration of the universe.^[19]

Schmidt and all the members of the High-Z Team (as defined by the co-authors of Riess et al. 1998) shared the 2007 Gruber Cosmology Prize, a $500,000 award, with the Supernova Cosmology Project (the set defined by the co-authors of Perlmutter et al. 1999) for their discovery of the accelerating expansion of the universe. Riess was the winner of MacArthur "Genius" Grant in 2008. He was also elected in 2009 to the National Academy of Sciences.^[20]

Along with Perlmutter and Schmidt, he was awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics for his contributions to the discovery of the acceleration of the expansion of the universe.^[19]

Riess, along with Brian P. Schmidt, and the High-Z Supernova Search Team shared in the 2015 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics.^[21]

In 2012, Riess received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.^[22]

In 2020, Riess was made fellow of the American Astronomical Society.^[23]

Controversies

In the book The 4 Percent Universe, scientific journalist Richard Panek claimed that Riess made improper use of the supernova data collected by the Calán/Tololo Survey, publishing them prior to the authors and without their permission.^[24] However, a later account, benefiting from access to the contemporary email threads of the participants, contradicts this claim.^[25] The claim is also doubtful in light of the received dates and acknowledgements in the relevant publications.^[26][27]

Media appearances

Riess participated on the NPR radio quiz program Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! in 2011.^[28]

Publications

Riess has more than 87,000 citations in Google Scholar and an h-index of 99. His most cited work, "Observational evidence from supernovae for an accelerating universe and a cosmological constant," has been cited over 20,000 times.^[29] Riess has been among the top 1% most cited in the world for subject field and year of publication in the Thomson Reuters Highly Cited Researchers reports for multiple years, including 2016 and 2020.^[30][31]

• Google Scholar citations

Highly cited articles (more than 1900 citations)

• 1998 with V Filippenko, P Challis, A Clocchiatti, A Diercks, et al., Observational evidence from supernovae for an accelerating universe and a cosmological constant, in: The Astronomical Journal. Vol. 116, nº 3; 1009.
• 2009 with KN Abazajian, JK Adelman-McCarthy, MA Agüeros, SS Allam, CA Prieto, et al., The seventh data release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, in: The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series. Vol. 182, nº 2; 543.
• 2004 with LG Strolger, J Tonry, S Casertano, HC Ferguson, B Mobasher, et al., Type Ia supernova discoveries at z> 1 from the Hubble Space Telescope: Evidence for past deceleration and constraints on dark energy evolution, in: The Astrophysical Journal. Vol. 607, nº 2; 665.
• 2007 with JK Adelman-McCarthy, MA Agüeros, SS Allam, KSJ Anderson, et al., The fifth data release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, in: The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series. Vol. 172, nº 2; 634.
• 2003 with JL Tonry, BP Schmidt, B Barris, P Candia, P Challis, A Clocchiatti, AL Coil, et al., Cosmological results from high-z supernovae, in: The Astrophysical Journal. Vol. 594, nº 1; 1.
• 2007 with LG Strolger, S Casertano, HC Ferguson, B Mobasher, B Gold, et al., New Hubble space telescope discoveries of type Ia supernovae at z≥ 1: narrowing constraints on the early behavior of dark energy, in: The Astrophysical Journal. Vol. 659, nº 1; 98.
• 1998 with BP Schmidt, NB Suntzeff, MM Phillips, RA Schommer, A Clocchiatti, et al., The high-Z supernova search: measuring cosmic deceleration and global curvature of the universe using type Ia supernovae, in: The Astrophysical Journal. Vol. 507, nº 1; 46.

See also

• Cosmological constant
• Dark energy
• List of Jewish Nobel laureates

References

1. Jain, Chelsi. "Awards List extended using a reliable source".
2. Jain, Chelsi. "Awards List extended using a reliable source".
3. "WEDDINGS; Nancy Schondorf And Adam Riess". The New York Times. January 11, 1998.
4. Wedding: Drs. Gail Michele Riess and Leonard Bruce Saltz. Nytimes.com (June 18, 1989). Retrieved on April 2, 2012.
5. Chasing the Great Beyond. Jhu.edu (January 12, 1998). Retrieved on April 2, 2012.
6. Saxon, Wolfgang (May 21, 1993). "Curt Riess, Author And Journalist, 90; Expert on Nazi Era". The New York Times.
7. Obituary: Michael Riess. New York Times (October 11, 2007). Retrieved on April 2, 2012.
8. "Jewish Insider's Daily Kickoff: December 15, 2017". Haaretz.
9. Spivey, Mark. "Watchung Hills graduate shares Nobel Prize in physics", Daily Record (Morristown), October 4, 2011. Accessed October 5, 2011. "Riess, who grew up in Warren, gave a shout-out to retired teacher Jeff Charney, saying his interest in science first was piqued at Watchung Hills."
10. Panek, Richard (2011). The 4% Universe: Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and the Race to Discover the Rest of Reality. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. ISBN 978-0-618-98244-8., pg. 174
11. Messersmith, Julie. "Nobel laureate Adam Riess named 22nd Bloomberg Distinguished Professor at Johns Hopkins", JHU Hub, Baltimore, 8 July 2016. Retrieved on 13 July 2016.
12. "Michael R. Bloomberg Commits $350 Million to Johns Hopkins for Transformational Academic Initiative 2013".
13. Palmer, Jason (October 4, 2011). "Nobel physics prize honours accelerating Universe find". BBC. Retrieved October 5, 2011.
14. Bloom, Floyd E. (December 18, 1998). "Breakthroughs 1998". Science. 282 (5397): 2193. Bibcode:1998Sci...282.2193B. doi:10.1126/science.282.5397.2193. S2CID 220092189. Retrieved November 27, 2020.
15. Type Ia Supernova Discoveries at z > 1 from the Hubble Space Telescope
16. A 2.4% Determination of the Local Value of the Hubble Constant
17. A Comprehensive Measurement of the Local Value of the Hubble Constant with 1 km s-1 Mpc-1 Uncertainty from the Hubble Space Telescope and the SH0ES Team
18. "Past Laureates of the Raymond and Beverly Sackler International Prize in Physics". Tel Aviv University. September 5, 2012. Retrieved May 28, 2023.
19. "Nobel physics prize honours accelerating Universe find". BBC News. October 4, 2011.
20. Newsroom. National-Academies.org (April 28, 2009). Retrieved on April 2, 2012.
21. "Breakthrough Prize – Fundamental Physics Breakthrough Prize Laureates – Adam Riess and the High-z Supernova Search Team". Breakthrough Prize. Retrieved May 28, 2023.
22. "Golden Plate Awardees of the American Academy of Achievement". www.achievement.org. American Academy of Achievement.
23. "Four Johns Hopkins faculty members named American Astronomical Society fellows". The Hub. Johns Hopkins University. March 4, 2020. Retrieved March 6, 2020.
24. Panek, Richard (2011). The 4 Percent Universe. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. ISBN 978-0-618-98244-8.
25. Press, William H. (2023). More Than Curious: A Science Memoir. Darwin-Finch. pp. 379–381. ISBN 9781312453210.
26. Riess, Adam (1995). "Using Type Ia Supernova Light Curve Shapes to Measure the Hubble Constant". The Astrophysical Journal. 438: L17. arXiv:astro-ph/9410054. Bibcode:1995ApJ...438L..17R. doi:10.1086/187704. S2CID 118938423.
27. Hamuy, Mario; Phillips, M. M.; Maza, Jose; Suntzeff, Nicholas B.; Schommer, R. A.; Aviles, R. (1995). "A Hubble Diagram of Distant Type 1a Supernovae". The Astronomical Journal. 109: 1. Bibcode:1995AJ....109....1H. doi:10.1086/117251.
28. Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me! from NPR
29. "Adam Riess". scholar.google.com. Retrieved May 19, 2021.
30. "13 Johns Hopkins scientists among most cited researchers in the world". The Hub. November 18, 2016. Retrieved May 19, 2021.
31. "Adam G. Riess". Web of Science Group. Retrieved May 19, 2021.

External links

 

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Adam Riess.

• Dark Energy Co-Discoverer Adam Riess Shares Shaw Prize in Astronomy for 2006
• Adam Riess on Nobelprize.org  
• Nobel Prize in Physics 2011 Announcement
• Chasing the Great Beyond

Awards and achievements
Preceded by Konstantin Novoselov and Andre Geim	Winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics with Saul Perlmutter and Brian Schmidt 2011	Succeeded by Serge Haroche and David J. Wineland