Debra Ann Fischer is an American astronomer who is the Eugene Higgins professor of

astronomy Astronomy is a natural science that studies celestial objects and the phenomena that occur in the cosmos. It uses mathematics, physics, and chemistry in order to explain their origin and their overall evolution. Objects of interest includ ...

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Stat ...

researching detection and characterization of exoplanets. She has detected hundreds of exoplanets and was part of the team to discover the first known multiple-planet system.

Education

Fischer received her degree in nursing from the

University of Iowa The University of Iowa (U of I, UIowa, or Iowa) is a public university, public research university in Iowa City, Iowa, United States. Founded in 1847, it is the oldest and largest university in the state. The University of Iowa is organized int ...

in 1975, a masters of science in physics from

San Francisco State University San Francisco State University (San Francisco State, SF State and SFSU) is a Public university, public research university in San Francisco, California, United States. It was established in 1899 as the San Francisco State Normal School and is ...

in 1992, and her PhD in astrophysics from the

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

in 1998.

Research and career

Fischer has co-authored more than 300 papers on

dwarf star A dwarf star is a star of relatively small size and low luminosity. Most main sequence stars are dwarf stars. The meaning of the word "dwarf" was later extended to some star-sized objects that are not stars, and compact stellar remnants that are ...

s and

exoplanet An exoplanet or extrasolar planet is a planet outside the Solar System. The first confirmed detection of an exoplanet was in 1992 around a pulsar, and the first detection around a main-sequence star was in 1995. A different planet, first det ...

s. In two papers with Jeff Valenti, she quantified a correlation between the chemical composition of host stars and the formation of orbiting gas giant planets. She led the

N2K Consortium The N2K Consortium is a collaborative multinational effort by American, Chilean and Japanese astronomers to find additional extrasolar planets around stars that are not already being surveyed. The N2K is shorthand for the set of roughly 2,000 of th ...

with Gregory P. Laughlin, detecting dozens of

s around metal-rich stars at Keck Observatory, Subaru Observatory, and the Magellan Observatory. Her work "The Twenty Five Year Lick Planet Search" is summarized in a 2014 paper. In 2015, she organized an international workshop on Extreme Precision Radial Velocities at Yale University and led the conference proceedings paper with 55 co-authors. With the

Oxford Oxford () is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city and non-metropolitan district in Oxfordshire, England, of which it is the county town. The city is home to the University of Oxford, the List of oldest universities in continuou ...

Zooniverse Zooniverse is a citizen science web portal owned and operated by the Citizen Science Alliance. It is home to some of the Internet's largest, most popular and most successful Citizen science, citizen science projects. The organization grew from ...

team, Fischer co-founded the

Planet Hunters Planet Hunters is a citizen science project to find exoplanets using human eyes. It does this by having users analyze data from the NASA Kepler space telescope and the NASA Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite. It was launched by a team led by D ...

Citizen Science project. Fischer has worked on instruments to improve measurement sensitivity for the detection of exoplanets. In 2011, she started the Fiber-optic Improved Next-generation Doppler Search for Exo-Earths with

the Planetary Society The Planetary Society is an American internationally-active non-governmental nonprofit organization. It is involved in research, public outreach, and political space advocacy for engineering projects related to astronomy, planetary science, a ...

, an improvement that helped planet hunters find smaller, more Earth-like extrasolar planets. In 2014, she worked with colleagues at Yale University on a microcomb for precise wavelength calibration. She was the principal investigator for three spectrographs: CHIRON, the

CTIO The Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) is an astronomical observatory located on the summit of Mt. Cerro Tololo in the Coquimbo Region of northern Chile, with additional facilities located on Mt. Cerro Pachón about to the southeas ...

High Resolution Spectrometer, VUES, the Vilnius University Echelle Spectrograph and EXPRES, the EXtreme PREcision Spectrograph. Fischer and colleagues have also helped to advance statistical and machine learning methods to improve data analysis and sensitivity to low mass planets. Fischer served as the Division Director at the National Science Foundation from 2021 - 2023.

Projects and contributions

When Fischer discovered the first multiple planet system in 1999, she contributed to the acknowledgement of planet formation by using an analysis that identified and collaborated the impact of structures of planets and their gas giants and even the chemical composition of host stars. Fischer also created a project calle
planethunters.org
which helped with her and her organization with planet detection. According to Fischer, her "Planet Hunters" project was based on th
Kepler Project
further resulting her and her group's expectations of their project to exceed successfully.

Honors and awards

* 1993 Graduate Student Fellowship, NSF * 1994 Marilyn C. Davis Scholarship, UCSC * 1997 California Space Grant, NASA * 2002 Carl Sagan Award, American Astronautical Society * 2004 Benjamin Dean Lecturer, California Academy of Science * 2004 Professional Astronomer for the Communication of Science, Amateur Astronomer Society of Northern California * 2005-2007 Cottrell Science Scholar * 2009 Radcliffe Institute Fellow: Sept 2009 – June 2010 * 2010 Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering * 2012 Elected Member of the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (The Academy) 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, and other ...

* 2016 Hall of Fame Inductee the San Francisco State University * 2020 Elected a Legacy Fellow 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 ...

* 2021 class of Fellows of the

American Association for the Advancement of Science The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is a United States–based international nonprofit with the stated mission of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific responsib ...

* 2021 Elected Member of the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, NGO, 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 ...

References

External links

- https://www.calstate.edu/impact-of-the-csu/alumni/made-in-the-csu/san-francisco/Pages/fischer.aspx#:~:text=In%20recognition%20of%20her%20pioneering,and%20the%20Cottrell%20Scholar%20program - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87yX6Ukd2OU&list=TLPQMTQxMTIwMjTwHj5ZsdJJ4w&index=4 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVsbqZZRjjQ {{DEFAULTSORT:Fischer, Debra Living people American women astronomers Discoverers of exoplanets Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Yale University faculty San Francisco State University alumni University of Iowa alumni University of California, Santa Cruz alumni American planetary scientists American women planetary scientists Fellows of the American Astronomical Society Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences 1953 births