Saul Perlmutter (born September 22, 1959) is a U.S. astrophysicist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a professor of physics at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

. He is a member of both the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and 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 communi ...

, and was elected a

Fellow A fellow is a concept whose exact meaning depends on context. In learned or professional societies, it refers to a privileged member who is specially elected in recognition of their work and achievements. Within the context of higher education ...

of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2003. He is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Perlmutter shared the 2006 Shaw Prize in Astronomy, the

2011 Nobel Prize in Physics The Nobel Prize in Physics ( sv, Nobelpriset i fysik) is awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to scientists in the various fields of physics. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the 1895 will of Alfred No ...

, and the 2015

Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics The Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics is one of the Breakthrough Prizes, awarded by the Breakthrough Prize Board. Initially named Fundamental Physics Prize, it was founded in July 2012 by Russia-born Israeli entrepreneur, venture cap ...

with

Brian P. Schmidt Brian Paul Schmidt (born 24 February 1967) is the Vice-Chancellor of the Australian National University (ANU). He was previously a Distinguished Professor, Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow and astrophysicist at the University's Mo ...

and

Adam Riess Adam Guy Riess (born December 16, 1969) is an American astrophysicist and Bloomberg Distinguished Professor at Johns Hopkins University and the Space Telescope Science Institute. He is known for his research in using supernovae as cosmologic ...

for providing evidence that the expansion of the universe is accelerating. Since 2021, he has been a member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST).

Education

Saul Perlmutter was born one of three children in the Ashkenazi Jewish family of

Daniel D. Perlmutter Daniel is a masculine given name and a surname of Hebrew language, Hebrew origin. It means "God is my judge"Hanks, Hardcastle and Hodges, ''Oxford Dictionary of First Names'', Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, , p. 68. (cf. Gabriel (given ...

, professor emeritus of chemical and biomolecular engineering at

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universit ...

, and Felice (Feige) D. Perlmutter (née Davidson), professor emerita of Temple University’s School of Social Administration. His maternal grandfather, the Yiddish teacher Samuel Davidson (1903–1989), emigrated to

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tota ...

(and then with his wife Chaika Newman to New York) from the

Bessarabia Bessarabia (; Gagauz: ''Besarabiya''; Romanian: ''Basarabia''; Ukrainian: ''Бессара́бія'') is a historical region in Eastern Europe, bounded by the Dniester river on the east and the Prut river on the west. About two thirds of ...

n town of Floreşti in 1919. Perlmutter spent his childhood in the Mount Airy neighborhood of

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

. He went to school in nearby Germantown; first

Greene Street Friends School Greene Street Friends School is a coeducational school under the care of Green Street Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends. Located in Germantown, Philadelphia, Greene Street serves 320 students in grades Pre-K to 8. History In ...

for the elementary grades, followed by Germantown Friends School for grades 7 through 12. He graduated with an AB in physics from Harvard ''magna cum laude'' in 1981 and received his PhD in physics from the

, in 1986. Perlmutter's PhD thesis titled "An Astrometric Search for a Stellar Companion to the Sun" described the development and use of an automated telescope to search for Nemesis candidates under

Richard A. Muller Richard A. Muller (born January 6, 1944) is an American physicist and emeritus professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley. He was also a faculty senior scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. In early 2010, M ...

. At the same time, he was using this telescope to search for Nemesis and supernovae, which would lead him to his award-winning work in cosmology. Perlmutter attributes the idea for an automated supernova search to Luis Alvarez, a 1968 Nobel laureate, who shared his idea with Perlmutter's research adviser.

Work

Perlmutter heads the Supernova Cosmology Project at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. It was this team along with the competing High-z Supernova Search Team led by Riess and Schmidt, which found evidence of the accelerating expansion of the universe based on observing Type Ia supernova in the distant universe. Type Ia supernova occurs whenever a

white dwarf star A white dwarf is a stellar core remnant composed mostly of electron-degenerate matter. A white dwarf is very dense: its mass is comparable to the Sun's, while its volume is comparable to the Earth's. A white dwarf's faint luminosity comes fro ...

gains enough additional mass to pass above the Chandrasekhar limit, usually by stealing additional mass from a companion star. Since all Type Ia supernovae are believed to occur in essentially the same way, they form a standard candle whose intrinsic luminosity can be assumed to be approximately the same in all cases. By measuring the apparent luminosity of the explosion from Earth, researchers can then infer the distance to supernova. Comparing this inferred distance to the apparent redshift of the explosion allows the observer to measure both the distance and relative velocity of the supernova. The Supernova Cosmology Project concluded that these distant supernovae were receding more quickly than would be expected due to the

Hubble expansion Hubble's law, also known as the Hubble–Lemaître law, is the observation in physical cosmology that galaxies are moving away from Earth at speeds proportional to their distance. In other words, the farther they are, the faster they are moving ...

alone, and, by inference, the expansion of the universe must have been accelerated over the billions of years since the supernovae occurred. The High-z Team also came to a similar conclusion. The two teams' reports were published within weeks of each other, and their conclusions were readily accepted by the scientific community due to corroborating theories. This conclusion has subsequently been supported by other lines of evidence. These findings reinvigorated research into the nature of the universe, and especially into the role of dark energy. For this work Perlmutter was awarded the

, shared jointly with Riess and Schmidt. Perlmutter is also a lead investigator in the Supernova/Acceleration Probe project, which aims to build a satellite dedicated to finding and studying more supernovae in the distant universe. The goal is to more precisely determine the rate at which the universe has been accelerating. He is also a participant in the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, which aims to increase our understanding of recent

global warming In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate variability and change, Climate change in a broader sense also includes ...

through improved analyses of climate data. Perlmutter is a professor and currently teaches at UC Berkeley.

Awards and recognition

Nobel Prize 2011-Nobel lectures KVA-DSC 7973

In 2002, Perlmutter won the Department of Energy's

E. O. Lawrence Award in Physics The Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award was established in 1959 in honor of a scientist who helped elevate American physics to the status of world leader in the field. E. O. Lawrence was the inventor of the cyclotron, an accelerator of subatomic parti ...

. In 2003, he was awarded the California Scientist of the Year Award, and, in 2005, he won the John Scott Award and the Padua Prize. In 2006, he shared the

Shaw Prize The Shaw Prize is an annual award presented by the Shaw Prize Foundation. Established in 2002 in Hong Kong, it honours "individuals who are currently active in their respective fields and who have recently achieved distinguished and signifi ...

Astronomy Astronomy () is a natural science that studies astronomical object, celestial objects and phenomena. It uses mathematics, physics, and chemistry in order to explain their origin and chronology of the Universe, evolution. Objects of interest ...

with

and

. The same year, Perlmutter won the Antonio Feltrinelli International Prize. Perlmutter and his team shared the 2007 Gruber Cosmology Prize (a $500,000 award) with Schmidt and the High-Z Team for discovering the accelerating expansion of the universe. In 2010, Perlmutter was named a Miller Senior Fellow of the Miller Institute at the

University of California Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

. In 2011, Perlmutter and Riess were named co-recipients of the

Albert Einstein Medal The Albert Einstein Medal is an award presented by the Albert Einstein Society in Bern. First given in 1979, the award is presented to people for "scientific findings, works, or publications related to Albert Einstein" each year. Recipients ...

. Perlmutter shared the

with Riess and Schmidt. The Nobel Prize includes a SEK 10 million cash award (approximately US$1.5 million). Perlmutter received one-half of the cash prize, while Riess and Schmidt shared the other half. In 2014, Perlmutter received the 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 o ...

. Perlmutter, Schmidt, Riess and their teams shared the 2015

with $3 million to be split among them. A

United States Department of Energy The United States Department of Energy (DOE) is an executive department of the U.S. federal government that oversees U.S. national energy policy and manages the research and development of nuclear power and nuclear weapons in the United Stat ...

2020 supercomputer is named Perlmutter in his honor.

Family

Saul Perlmutter has two sisters:

Shira Perlmutter Shira Perlmutter (born 1956) is an American lawyer and law professor and the 14th Register of Copyrights. Perlmutter has given public lectures on copyright, stating that Americans desire copyright laws that make sense, that are fair, and that ref ...

(b. 1956), a lawyer, and

Tova Perlmutter Tova is a given name, nickname and a surname. Notable people with this name include: Given name * Saint Tova of Thorney (died ), Anglo-Saxon martyr * Tova of the Obotrites (, Slavic princess and queen consort of Denmark * Tova Beck-Friedman (bor ...

(b. 1967), a nonprofit executive. He is married to Laura Nelson, an anthropologist at

, and has one daughter, Noa.

Popular culture

Reference to Saul Perlmutter was made on the CBS television comedy series '' The Big Bang Theory'' during the 2011 episode "The Speckerman Recurrence". In the episode, the character Sheldon Cooper watches the Nobel award ceremony on his laptop, and jealously berates Perlmutter: "Look at Dr. Saul Perlmutter up there, clutching that Nobel prize. What's the matter Saul, you afraid somebody's going to steal it? Like you stole Einstein's cosmological constant?" Then later: "Oh, now Perlmutter's shaking the King's hand. Yeah, check for your watch, Gustaf, he might have lifted it." Perlmutter was also referenced in the 2011 episode of ''The Big Bang Theory'', "The Rhinitis Revelation". In a conversation with his mother, Sheldon says, "I’ve got a treat for us tomorrow, Mom. I’m taking you to see Saul Perlmutter give a lecture about his Nobel Prize-winning work in cosmology. And the best part is, at the Q and A afterward, I’ve worked up a couple of Q’s that will stump his sorry A." Later in the episode, Sheldon criticises the lecture and questions the decision to award Perlmutter a Nobel Prize.

Technical reports and conference/event proceedings

* Perlmutter, S., ''et al.'
"Progress Report on the Berkeley/Anglo-Australian Observatory High-redshift Supernova Search"
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, (November 1990). * Perlmutter, S., ''et al.'
"Discovery of the Most Distant Supernovae and the Quest for "
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, (May 1994). * Perlmutter, S., ''et al.'
"Discovery of a Supernova Explosion at Half the Age of the Universe and its Cosmological Implications"
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, (December 16, 1997). * Perlmutter, S., ''et al.'
"The Distant Type Ia Supernova Rate"
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, (May 28, 2002). * Perlmutter, S., ''et al.'
"The Supernova Legacy Survey: Measurement of Omega_M, Omega_Lambda, and w from the First Year Data Set"
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, (October 14, 2005). * Perlmutter, S
"Supernovae, Dark Energy and the Accelerating Universe: How DOE Helped to Win (yet another) Nobel Prize"
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, (January 13, 2012).

References

External links

Supernova Cosmology Project Website
*
List of scholarly publications
as provided by the SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS) abstract server. {{DEFAULTSORT:Perlmutter, Saul 1959 births Living people Nobel laureates in Physics American Nobel laureates American astrophysicists American people of Moldovan-Jewish descent American cosmologists Harvard College alumni Jewish American scientists Jewish physicists Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Institute for Advanced Study visiting scholars University of California, Berkeley alumni University of California, Berkeley College of Letters and Science faculty 21st-century American astronomers 20th-century American astronomers Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Members of the American Philosophical Society Germantown Friends School alumni Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory people Albert Einstein Medal recipients Dark energy Fellows of the American Physical Society