Mészáros Named Holder of Eberly Family Chair in Astronomy and Astrophysics

13 October 2005—Peter Mészáros, distinguished professor of astronomy and astrophysics and of physics, has been named the Holder of the Eberly Chair of Astronomy and Astrophysics. He was appointed to the Chair by the Office of the President, based on the recommendations of colleagues and the Dean, in recognition of his national and international reputation for excellence in research and teaching.

Mészáros, is a theoretical astrophysicist whose research involves high-energy astrophysics, gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), cosmology, and neutron stars. He and his collaborators developed the cosmological-fireball-shock scenario—the most widely accepted interpretation of gamma-ray bursts. His predictions of the properties of burst afterglows at X-ray and optical wavelengths were confirmed by observations made in 1997 with the Bepp-SAX satellite. Since that time, more than 100 afterglows have been studied in detail, and an increasing number of new and precise afterglow detections, locations, and follow-up observations are being obtained with the Swift multi-wavelength GRB satellite.

Launched on 20 November 2004, the Swift satellite is designed to "swiftly" locate these very brief gamma-ray bursts—mysterious explosions from deep space that outshine the entire universe before rapidly fading away, sometimes in just a few seconds. Swift is an international collaboration among the National Atmospheric and Space Administration (NASA) and its partners in Great Britain, Italy, and the United States, with Penn State as the lead university partner and home to the Mission Operations Center. Mészáros serves as the science and theory lead for the Swift consortium.

Among the national and international honors Mészáros has received for his research accomplishments are the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship in 1999, two Smithsonian Fellowships in 1982 and 1990, an International Research and Exchanges Board Fellowship in 1986, and a Royal Society Guest Fellowship in 1991. He also was co-recipient of the first prize of the Gravity Research Foundation in 1976.

Mészáros has been a member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University, the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of California in Santa Barbara, and the Hobby-Eberly Telescope board. He is a member of the Swift Science Team and the IceCube Antarctic Neutrino Detector project. He also is a member of the Institute for Gravitational Physics and Geometry and the Center for Gravitational Wave Physics at Penn State. He has served on numerous committees of NASA, the National Science Foundation, and the American Astronomical Society. He also has served as the chair of the Nonthermal Gamma-Ray Sources Program and the Ultra-High Energy Cosmic Rays, Neutrinos, and Photons Program, both at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of California in Santa Barbara.

In 2000, Mészáros was one of three astrophysicists awarded the Bruno Rossi Prize by the High Energy Astrophysics Division of the American Astronomical Society for their pioneering work on gamma-ray bursts. He and his colleagues, Bohdan Paczynski of Princeton University and Sir Martin Rees of the Royal Observatories in England, were award the Rossi Prize for their development of theoretical models of gamma-ray bursts years before observational scientists had adequate tools to study the phenomena.

Mészáros received his master's degree in physics from the National University of Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1967 and his doctoral degree in astronomy from the University of California at Berkeley in 1972. After appointments as a research associate at Princeton University and a research fellow at the University of Cambridge in England, he was a staff scientist at the Max-Planck Institute for Astrophysics from 1975 to 1983. He joined the Penn State faculty as an associate professor in 1983, was promoted to professor in 1987, and was named distinguished professor in 2000. He served as head of the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics from 1993 to 2003.

As part of this appointment, Mészáros will receive research funds from an endowment given to Penn State by the Eberly Family Trust. In 1986, the Eberly Family Trust gave $10 million to establish a chair in each department in the Eberly College of Science, to create endowments for biotechnology, and to provide funding for the Hobby-Eberly Telescope. The gift was among the largest donations made to the campaign for Penn State, the university’s successful six-year effort to raise $300 million in private support.

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