Meg Urry to Explain the Mystery of Black Holes
The growth of supermassive black holes will be the topic of discussion at this year’s Russell Women in Science Lecture Series at Mills College.
The annual event, set for Tuesday, April 29, 2014, will feature Meg Urry, director of the Yale Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics, in a lecture titled “Black Holes, Galaxies, and the Evolution of the Universe: An Observer’s View.”
Open to the public, the lecture will examine what black holes are and how we can study them using a variety of telescopes.
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Urry—the first woman tenured by Yale University’s Physics Department and a former senior scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which runs the Hubble space telescope—will describe how her research sheds new light on the growth of supermassive black holes, and will use computer simulations to illustrate the contemporaneous evolution of their host galaxies.
Urry is the Israel Munson Professor of Physics and Astronomy and recent chair of the Physics Department at Yale, and is the incoming president of the American Astronomical Society.
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“I’m honored to come to a distinguished women’s college like Mills to lecture about astonishing developments in astrophysics that give us new insights into the evolution of the universe,” said Urry. “I’m also excited to spend a day on campus talking to students and encouraging them to pursue science as a career.”
Nestled in the foothills of Oakland, California, Mills College is an independent liberal arts college offering education that fosters leadership, social responsibility, and creativity.
Photo courtesy: Mills College, James Porto
