Jack Jonathan Lissauer (born 1957) is an American research scientist who has worked for NASA's
Ames Research Center
The Ames Research Center (ARC), also known as NASA Ames, is a major NASA research center at Moffett Federal Airfield in California's Silicon Valley. It was founded in 1939 as the second National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) laborat ...
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...
in 1982.
Prior to joining
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...
, Lissauer was an associate professor (September 1993 – August 1996) and assistant professor (June 1987 – August 1993) at
Stony Brook University
Stony Brook University (SBU), officially the State University of New York at Stony Brook, is a public university, public research university in Stony Brook, New York, United States, on Long Island. Along with the University at Buffalo, it is on ...
. Earlier, he served as a visiting researcher at the
University of California, Santa Barbara
The University of California, Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara or UCSB) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Santa Barbara County, California, United States. Tracing its roots back to 1891 as an ...
(July 1985 – June 1987) and as an assistant research astronomer at the University of California, Berkeley (January–July 1985).
His primary research interests are the formation of planetary systems, planetary dynamics and chaos, planetary ring systems, and circumstellar/protoplanetary disks.
He discovered, together with
Mark R. Showalter
Mark Robert Showalter (born December 5, 1957) is a senior research scientist at the SETI Institute. He is the discoverer of six moons and three planetary rings. He is the Principal Investigator of NASA's Planetary Data System Rings Node, a co-inv ...
, the inner satellites of
Uranus
Uranus is the seventh planet from the Sun. It is a gaseous cyan-coloured ice giant. Most of the planet is made of water, ammonia, and methane in a Supercritical fluid, supercritical phase of matter, which astronomy calls "ice" or Volatile ( ...
:
Cupid
In classical mythology, Cupid ( , meaning "passionate desire") is the god of desire, erotic love, attraction and affection. He is often portrayed as the son of the love goddess Venus and the god of war Mars. He is also known as Amor (Latin: ...
and Mab. With Showalter, I. de Pater and R. S. French, he also discovered
Hippocamp
The hippocampus, or hippocamp or ''hippokampos'' (plural: hippocampi or hippocamps; , from , and H. Julian Allen Award for his paper "Models of Jupiter's growth incorporating thermal and hydrodynamic constraints".
His previous awards include the Harold C. Urey Prize fro Division of Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) the Chambliss Writing Prize from the AAS and a NASA Honor Award for Exceptional Scientific Achievement.
He was elected a Legacy Fellow of the American Astronomical I Society in 2020.