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Freedman, Wendy L.
Oral history interview with Wendy Freedman, 2020 December 21.
Interview with Wendy Freedman, John & Marion Sullivan University Professor and senior member of the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago. She recounts her childhood in Canada, her early interests in science, and her decision to attend the University of Toronto, where she developed an interest in astronomy. She cites the Canada France Hawaii Telescope as the reason she stayed at Toronto for graduate school to work under the direction of Barry Madore. Freedman describes her postdoctoral appointment at Carnegie Observatories to work on the Cepheid distance scale, and she explains her decision to accept a position on the permanent staff at Carnegie. She narrates the origins of the Hubble Space Telescope Key Project, and she explains the resistance among theorists regarding the existence of the Hubble constant. Freedman discusses the importance of CCDs to measure the Hubble constant, and she marvels at Hubbles long and productive life. She explains the inspiration for starting the Giant Magellan Telescope as an international collaboration, and she explains the opportunities that led to her becoming director of Carnegie. Freedman surveys the cooperative nature between the GMT and LSST projects and she projects optimism that GMT will propel fundamental advances in black hole research and for the search for exoplanets and possible for life beyond earth. She explains her decision to join the faculty at Chicago and she expresses pleasure at being able to work with students as a professor. At the end of the interview, Freedman reflects on the increasing complexity and expense of large-scale astronomy research and why it is important that the astronomy community relates its work and discoveries to the broader public.
Wendy Freedman is the John & Marion Sullivan University Professor and senior member of the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago. Freedman completed her graduate studies at the University of Toronto and pursued a postdoctoral appointment at Carnegie Observatories in Pasadena, California, where she stayed on staff for 30 years.
Freedman, Wendy L.
Kennicutt, R. C.
Madore, B.
Mould, J. R.
Readhead, Anthony C. S.
Sandage, Allan
Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Corporation.
Carnegie Observatories
Hubble Space Telescope (Spacecraft)
University of Chicago. Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics
University of Toronto
Vera C. Rubin Observatory
Black holes (Astronomy)
CCD cameras
Cepheids
Cosmology
Extrasolar planets
Hubble constant.
Interviews. aat
Oral histories. aat
Transcripts. aat
Zierler, David, 1979- interviewer.
AIP-ICOS
American Institute of Physics. Niels Bohr Library & Archives. One Physics Ellipse, College Park, MD 20740, USA
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