Former HST Colleague Wins Nobel Prize

Former Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) director, Riccardo Giaconni received the Nobel Prize in physics. He was awarded the prestigious award for his outstanding discoveries of cosmic X-ray sources that have paved the way for X-ray astronomy.

Dr. Giacconi was Director of STScI from 1981-1993. During his tenure, HST was launched, spherical aberration was detected and the telescope was fixed.

"In 1990, when spherical aberration was first discovered with HST, more than anyone else it was Riccardo that became the driving force in rallying everyone to get the problem fixed," said Dr. David Leckrone, HST Senior Project Scientist. "I think that was his most important contribution to the legacy of Hubble."

Dr. Giacconi is the current president of the Associated Universities Inc. in Washington and Research Professor of Physics and Astronomy at John Hopkins University in Baltimore. The astronomer has contributed to such NASA missions as Uhuru, the High Energy Astronomy Observatory-2 and Chandra. Among his many scientific accomplishments are the detection of X-ray sources outside our solar system, the discovery that the universe contains background radiation of X-ray light and the detection of X-ray sources that are considered to contain black holes.

The full NASA press release can be viewed at ftp://ftp.hq.nasa.gov/pub/pao/pressrel/2002/02-197.txt

For more information on the Nobel Prize visit: http://www.nobel.se