Jeremiah Paul "Jerry" Ostriker (born April 13, 1937) is an American astrophysicist and a

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who professes". Professo ...

astronomy Astronomy () is a natural science that studies celestial objects and phenomena. It uses mathematics, physics, and chemistry in order to explain their origin and evolution. Objects of interest include planets, moons, stars, nebulae, g ...

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 Manhatt ...

and is the Charles A. Young Professor ''Emeritus'' at Princeton where he also continues as a senior research scholar. Ostriker has also served as a university administrator as Provost of

Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...

Education

He received his B.A. from

Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

, and his Ph.D at the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

Career and research

After earning his Ph.D. at Chicago, he conducted post-doctoral work at the

University of Cambridge , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...

. From 1971 to 1995, Ostriker was a professor at

Princeton Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the nin ...

, and served as Provost there from 1995 to 2001. From 2001 to 2003, he was appointed as

Plumian Professor of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy The Plumian chair of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy is one of the major professorships in Astronomy at Cambridge University, alongside the Lowndean Professorship (which is now mainly held by mathematicians). The chair is currently held at t ...

at the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge. He then returned to Princeton as the Charles Young Professor of Astronomy and is now the Charles A. Young Professor ''Emeritus''. He continues as a senior research scholar at Princeton and became a professor of astronomy at Columbia in 2012. Ostriker has been very influential in advancing the theory that most of the

mass Mass is an intrinsic property of a body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the quantity of matter in a physical body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physics. It was found that different atoms and different ele ...

in the

universe The universe is all of space and time and their contents, including planets, stars, galaxies, and all other forms of matter and energy. The Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmological description of the development of the univers ...

is not visible at all, but consists of

dark matter Dark matter is a hypothetical form of matter thought to account for approximately 85% of the matter in the universe. Dark matter is called "dark" because it does not appear to interact with the electromagnetic field, which means it does not ...

. His research has also focused on 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 ...

, galaxy evolution,

cosmology Cosmology () is a branch of physics and metaphysics dealing with the nature of the universe. The term ''cosmology'' was first used in English in 1656 in Thomas Blount's ''Glossographia'', and in 1731 taken up in Latin by German philosopher ...

and

black holes A black hole is a region of spacetime where gravity is so strong that nothing, including light or other electromagnetic waves, has enough energy to escape it. The theory of general relativity predicts that a sufficiently compact mass can def ...

. On June 20, 2013 Ostriker was given the White House Champions of Change Award for his role in initiating the

Sloan Digital Sky Survey The Sloan Digital Sky Survey or SDSS is a major multi-spectral imaging and spectroscopic redshift survey using a dedicated 2.5-m wide-angle optical telescope at Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico, United States. The project began in 2000 ...

project, which makes all of its astronomical data sets available publicly on the Internet Ostriker is also known for the Ostriker–Peebles criterion, relating to the stability of galactic formation.

Publications

As of April 2021, Ostriker's articles have been cited over 85,910 times and he has an

h-index The ''h''-index is an author-level metric that measures both the productivity and citation impact of the publications, initially used for an individual scientist or scholar. The ''h''-index correlates with obvious success indicators such as ...

of 130 (130 papers with at least 130 citations) according to the

NASA Astrophysics Data System The SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS) is an online database of over 16 million astronomy and physics papers from both peer reviewed and non-peer reviewed sources. Abstracts are available free online for almost all articles, and full scanned a ...

including: * "Precision Cosmology? Not Just Yet"
''Heart of Darkness, Unraveling the Mysteries of the Invisible Universe''
Princeton University Press (2013) *''New Light on Dark Matter'', Science, 300, pp 1909–1914 (2003) *''The Probability Distribution Function of Light in the Universe: Results from Hydrodynamic Simulations'', Astrophysical Journal 597, 1 (2003) *''Cosmic Mach Number as a Function of Overdensity and Galaxy Age'', Astrophysical Journal, 553, 513 (2001) *''Collisional Dark Matter and the Origin of Massive Black Holes'', Physical Review Letters, 84, 5258-5260 (2000). *''Hydrodynamics of Accretion onto Black Holes'', Adv. Space Res., 7, 951-960 (1998).

Awards and honors

Ostriker has won numerous awards and honors including: *Membership of 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 ...

(1974) *Membership of the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, a ...

(1975) * Helen B. Warner Prize for Astronomy of the

American Astronomical Society The American Astronomical Society (AAS, sometimes spoken as "double-A-S") is an American society of professional astronomers and other interested individuals, headquartered in Washington, DC. The primary objective of the AAS is to promote the adv ...

(AAS) (1972) * Henry Norris Russell Lectureship of the AAS (1980) * INSA-Vainu Bappu Memorial Award (1993) *Membership of the

American Philosophical Society The American Philosophical Society (APS), founded in 1743 in Philadelphia, is a scholarly organization that promotes knowledge in the sciences and humanities through research, professional meetings, publications, library resources, and communit ...

(1994) *Foreign membership of the

Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences ( nl, Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, abbreviated: KNAW) is an organization dedicated to the advancement of science and literature in the Netherlands. The academy is housed ...

(1999) * Karl Schwarzschild Medal (1999) *

National Medal of Science The National Medal of Science is an honor bestowed by the President of the United States to individuals in science and engineering who have made important contributions to the advancement of knowledge in the fields of behavioral and social scienc ...

by U.S. President

Bill Clinton William Jefferson Clinton (né Blythe III; born August 19, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. He previously served as governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 and again ...

(2000) * Golden Plate Award of the

American Academy of Achievement The American Academy of Achievement, colloquially known as the Academy of Achievement, is a non-profit educational organization that recognizes some of the highest achieving individuals in diverse fields and gives them the opportunity to meet ...

(2001) *

Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society The Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society is the highest award given by the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS). The RAS Council have "complete freedom as to the grounds on which it is awarded" and it can be awarded for any reason. Past awar ...

(2004) * Elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMemRS) in 2007 *

Bruce Medal The Catherine Wolfe Bruce Gold Medal is awarded every year by the Astronomical Society of the Pacific for outstanding lifetime contributions to astronomy. It is named after Catherine Wolfe Bruce, an American patroness of astronomy, and was fi ...

(2011) *

James Craig Watson Medal 400px, James Craig Watson Medal The James Craig Watson Medal was established by the bequest of James Craig Watson, an astronomer the University of Michigan between 1863 and 1879, and is awarded every 1-4 years by the U.S. National Academy of Scien ...

(2012)
White House Champion of Change
(2013) *

Gruber Prize in Cosmology The Gruber Prize in Cosmology, established in 2000, is one of three prestigious international awards worth US$500,000 made by the Gruber Foundation, a non-profit organization based at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. Since 2001, the G ...

(2015) *Elected a Legacy Fellow of the

in 2020.

Personal life

Ostriker married noted poet and essayist Alicia Ostriker (née Suskin) in 1959. Together they have three adult children: Rebecca, Eve, and Gabriel.Jeremiah P. Ostriker biography
/ref> Like her father, Eve became an astrophysics professor at Princeton University, in 2012, the same year as her father's retirement. Jeremiah and Alicia Ostriker have been residents of

Princeton, New Jersey Princeton is a municipality with a borough form of government in Mercer County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. It was established on January 1, 2013, through the consolidation of the Borough of Princeton and Princeton Township, both of w ...

."Poet Alicia Ostriker to read in Highland Park"
'' Courier News'', September 20, 2014. Accessed January 26, 2020. "She still lives in Princeton with her husband of 56 years, astrophysicist Jeremiah Ostriker."

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ostriker, Jeremiah P. 1937 births Living people People from Princeton, New Jersey Fellows of Clare College, Cambridge Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Harvard University alumni University of Chicago alumni Princeton University faculty Columbia University faculty American astronomers National Medal of Science laureates Recipients of the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society Foreign Members of the Royal Society Members of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Fellows of the American Astronomical Society Members of the American Philosophical Society Plumian Professors of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy