Career
Muller obtained an A.B. degree at Columbia University (New York) and a Ph.D. degree in physics from University of California, Berkeley. Muller began his career as a graduate student under Nobel laureate Luis Alvarez doing particle physics experiments and working with bubble chambers. During his early years he also helped to co-create accelerator mass spectrometry and made some of the first measurements of anisotropy in the cosmic microwave background.
Subsequently, Muller branched out into other areas of science, and in particular the Earth sciences. His work has included attempting to understand the ice ages, dynamics at the core-mantle boundary, patterns of extinction and biodiversity through time, and the processes associated with impact cratering. One of his most well known proposals is the Nemesis hypothesis suggesting the Sun could have an as yet undetected companion dwarf star, whose perturbations of the Oort cloud and subsequent effects on the flux of comets entering the inner Solar System could explain an apparent 26 million year periodicity in extinction events.
In March 2011, he testified to the U.S. House Science, Space and Technology Committee that preliminary data confirmed an overall global warming trend. On July 28, 2012, he stated, "Humans are almost entirely the cause."
Along with Carl Pennypacker, Muller started The Berkeley Real Time Supernova Search, which became The Berkeley Automated Supernova Search. It then became the Supernova Cosmology Project, which discovered the accelerating expansion of the universe, for which Muller's graduate student, Saul Perlmutter, shared the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics.
Read more about this topic: Richard A. Muller
Famous quotes containing the word career:
“My ambition in life: to become successful enough to resume my career as a neurasthenic.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“Clearly, society has a tremendous stake in insisting on a woman’s natural fitness for the career of mother: the alternatives are all too expensive.”
—Ann Oakley (b. 1944)
“I seemed intent on making it as difficult for myself as possible to pursue my “male” career goal. I not only procrastinated endlessly, submitting my medical school application at the very last minute, but continued to crave a conventional female role even as I moved ahead with my “male” pursuits.”
—Margaret S. Mahler (1897–1985)