Sarah Tuttle is an astrophysicist and assistant professor of

astrophysics Astrophysics is a science that employs the methods and principles of physics and chemistry in the study of astronomical objects and phenomena. As one of the founders of the discipline said, Astrophysics "seeks to ascertain the nature of the he ...

at the

University of Washington The University of Washington (UW, simply Washington, or informally U-Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1861, Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast; it was established in Seat ...

. Tuttle builds spectrographs to detect nearby galaxies, including work on VIRUS (the Visible Integral-field Replicable Unit Spectrograph) installed on

McDonald Observatory McDonald Observatory is an astronomical observatory located near unincorporated community of Fort Davis in Jeff Davis County, Texas, United States. The facility is located on Mount Locke in the Davis Mountains of West Texas, with additional fac ...

Hobby–Eberly Telescope The Hobby–Eberly Telescope (HET) is a 10-meter (30-foot) aperture telescope located at the McDonald Observatory in Davis Mountains, Texas. The Hobby–Eberly Telescope is one of the largest optical telescopes in the world. It combines a numb ...

to study dark energy, and FIREBall (Faint Intergalactic medium Redshifted Emission Balloon), the world's first fiber fed ultraviolet spectrograph.

Early life and education

Tuttle was born and raised in Santa Cruz, studied physics at the

University of California, Santa Cruz The University of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz or UCSC) is a public land-grant research university in Santa Cruz, California. It is one of the ten campuses in the University of California system. Located on Monterey Bay, on the edge ...

and graduated with a

B.Sc A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University of ...

in 2001. From 2001 to 2002, she worked for Add-Vision in

Scotts Valley Scotts Valley is a small city in Santa Cruz County, California, United States, about thirty miles (48 km) south of downtown San Jose and six miles (10 km) north of the city of Santa Cruz, in the upland slope of the Santa Cruz Mounta ...

as a research scientist, and was part of the team that built the first screen-printed polymer light emitting diodes. Tuttle received a

M.Sc A Master of Science ( la, Magisterii Scientiae; abbreviated MS, M.S., MSc, M.Sc., SM, S.M., ScM or Sc.M.) is a master's degree in the field of science awarded by universities in many countries or a person holding such a degree. In contrast to ...

and

M.Phil The Master of Philosophy (MPhil; Latin ' or ') is a postgraduate degree. In the United States, an MPhil typically includes a taught portion and a significant research portion, during which a thesis project is conducted under supervision. An MPhil ...

in astronomy from

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manha ...

in 2006 and 2007, and obtained her

Ph.D A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is a ...

in 2010, working with David Schiminovich on the Faint Intergalactic medium Redshifted Emission Balloon (FIREBall). Tuttle built the world's first fiber fed ultraviolet

spectrograph An optical spectrometer (spectrophotometer, spectrograph or spectroscope) is an instrument used to measure properties of light over a specific portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, typically used in spectroscopic analysis to identify mat ...

, which launched on FIREBall in 2009.

Research and career

Tuttle's research applies novel hardware approaches to spectrograph instrumentation design, particularly aimed to isolate star formation regulation in galaxies through emission and infall from the

interstellar medium In astronomy, the interstellar medium is the matter and radiation that exist in the space between the star systems in a galaxy. This matter includes gas in ionic, atomic, and molecular form, as well as dust and cosmic rays. It fills interstella ...

. During her Ph.D. at

Columbia Columbia may refer to: * Columbia (personification), the historical female national personification of the United States, and a poetic name for America Places North America Natural features * Columbia Plateau, a geologic and geographic region in ...

, Tuttle built the spectrograph for FIREBall, a balloon-borne telescope that is coupled to an ultraviolet spectrograph and designed to discover the

intergalactic medium Intergalactic may refer to: * "Intergalactic" (song), a song by the Beastie Boys * ''Intergalactic'' (TV series), a 2021 UK science fiction TV series * Intergalactic space * Intergalactic travel, travel between galaxies in science fiction and ...

(IGM) in emission. The FIREBall

built by Tuttle was the world's first fiber fed ultraviolet spectrograph and placed upper constraints on IGM emission. Labvirusunits

Tuttle served as the lead for the

's VIRUS detector from 2010 until 2012, where she prototyped, finalized and characterized the VIRUS spectrograph. The instrument consists of 156 spectroscopic channels fed by 34944 fiberoptic channels, covering a 22 arcminute field of view. Tuttle and her colleagues' current astrophysics work still utilizes VIRUS data. In 2016 she joined the University of Washington as an assistant professor. As of May 2019, Tuttle was leading the recommissioning of the KOSMOS spectrograph for the

Apache Point Observatory The Apache Point Observatory (APO; obs. code: 705) is an astronomical observatory located in the Sacramento Mountains in Sunspot, New Mexico, United States, approximately south of Cloudcroft. The observatory is operated by New Mexico State Un ...

, an instrument originally stationed at

Kitt Peak Observatory The Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO) is a United States astronomical observatory located on Kitt Peak of the Quinlan Mountains in the Arizona-Sonoran Desert on the Tohono Oʼodham Nation, west-southwest of Tucson, Arizona. With more than ...

. Her science-outreach work includes appearances on the podcast

365 Days of Astronomy ''365 Days of Astronomy'' is an educational podcast, inspired by the International Year of Astronomy, published daily beginning in 2009. It is produced as a collaboration between Southern Illinois University Edwardsville and Astrosphere New Media ...

in 2009 and writing for ''

The Toast ''The Toast'' was an American anthology, humor and feminist writing website, founded by editors Nicole Cliffe and Daniel M. Lavery (né Ortberg) and publisher Nicholas Pavich. It was active from January 2013 through July 2016. Content and tar ...

'' in 2014. She regularly appears as an astronomy expert in articles in ''

The Seattle Times ''The Seattle Times'' is a daily newspaper serving Seattle, Washington, United States. It was founded in 1891 and has been owned by the Blethen family since 1896. ''The Seattle Times'' has the largest circulation of any newspaper in Washington s ...

'', ''

The Mercury News ''The Mercury News'' (formerly ''San Jose Mercury News'', often locally known as ''The Merc'') is a morning daily newspaper published in San Jose, California, in the San Francisco Bay Area. It is published by the Bay Area News Group, a subsidia ...

'' and ''

Gizmodo ''Gizmodo'' ( ) is a design, technology, science and science fiction website. It was originally launched as part of the Gawker Media network run by Nick Denton, and runs on the Kinja platform. ''Gizmodo'' also includes the subsite '' io9'', w ...

.'' In 2014, the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nat ...

honored her as a Kavli Fellow. Tuttle has also contributed to American Astronomical Society workshops and supported new guidelines to build a more diverse and inclusive environment.

Activism

Tuttle was a board member and hotline operator for the Lilith Fund until 2016, a reproductive-rights nonprofit that provides

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2 ...

women with financial support for obtaining

abortion Abortion is the termination of a pregnancy by removal or expulsion of an embryo or fetus. An abortion that occurs without intervention is known as a miscarriage or "spontaneous abortion"; these occur in approximately 30% to 40% of pregn ...

s. She currently serves on the board of Kadima, a Seattle-based Reconstructionist Jewish community. Her 2015 response to

Tim Hunt Sir Richard Timothy Hunt, (born 19 February 1943) is a British biochemist and molecular physiologist. He was awarded the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Paul Nurse and Leland H. Hartwell for their discoveries of protein molec ...

's statements about women in the laboratory drew international coverage and was featured on

BuzzFeed BuzzFeed, Inc. is an American Internet media, news and entertainment company with a focus on digital media. Based in New York City, BuzzFeed was founded in 2006 by Jonah Peretti and John S. Johnson III to focus on tracking viral content. ...

. In an interview with

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein Chanda Prescod-Weinstein (born ) is an American theoretical cosmologist and particle physicist at the University of New Hampshire. She is also an advocate of increasing diversity in science. Early life and education Prescod-Weinstein was bor ...

during the buildup to the 2017

March for Science The March for Science (formerly known as the Scientists' March on Washington) is an international series of rallies and marches held on Earth Day. The inaugural march was held on April 22, 2017, in Washington, D.C., and more than 600 other cit ...

, ''

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large n ...

'' cited a group statement by Tuttle, Prescod-Weinstein and

Joseph Osmundson Joseph S. Osmundson (born 1983) is an American biophysicist and writer. He is a Clinical Assistant Professor of Biology at New York University. Osmundson is the author of various books exploring bodies, queerness, race, and geography. Education ...

on ''The Establishment''. Their article entitled "We Are The Scientists Against A Fascist Government" called for greater participation of scientists in politics and compared the political situation in the United States to early-1930s Germany. She has produced numerous studies on the gender bias within astrophysics, including one published in ''

Nature Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. Although humans ar ...

'' in 2017 which found women's 1st author papers receive 10% fewer citations than similar papers led by male 1st authors. She furthermore emphasizes the importance of supporting scientists from underrepresented groups.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Tuttle, Sarah Living people American astrophysicists American Reconstructionist Jews American women physicists University of Washington faculty University of California, Santa Cruz alumni People from Santa Cruz, California American science communicators Year of birth missing (living people) 21st-century American scientists American women academics 21st-century American women scientists Scientists from California

Early life and education

Research and career

Activism

See also

References