Andrea M. Ghez

Andrea Mia Ghez (born June 16, 1965) is an American professor of astrophysics. She was elected in 2004 a Member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, as well as a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, in 2012 a Member of the American Philosophical Society, and in 2019 a Fellow of the American Physical Society. Awarded the Royal Society Bakerian Medal in 2016, Ghez shared the 2012 Crafoord Prize in Astronomy with Reinhard Genzel and shared one half of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics with Genzel; the other half went to Roger Penrose.

Quotes

• These days, one of the things I like to talk about with young scientists in my group, or anywhere is the idea that you want to take stock every few years of three things:
  One is what is it that you love to do, what gives you pleasure? What do you find intriguing?
  Two is what is it that you want to explore? It’s important to keep exploring because you don’t know what you’re going to enjoy until you try it. I’ll come back to an example of that for me, which really taught me that lesson.
  And then the last thing is, how do you give back, how do you open up that opportunity for others to figure out what they enjoy? You’ve benefited from mentors. So how can you give back?
  So those three things I think are useful to continually take stock of, because as you evolve the answer to the first thing isn’t going to stay the same. It’s just going to keep changing. So check in with yourself every once in a while.
  • Interview with Andrea Ghez, March 2021. nobelprize.org.

• We live in the golden era of astrophysical research because technology is evolving so quickly. There are so many new windows that we've opened up: gravitational waves being a great example of that. And I think we're still in the early days of what we were learning about compact objects from gravitational waves. The Event Horizon Telescope is another facility at radio wavelengths that is opening up to very high resolutions. And then there is the European Extremely Large Telescope. The TMT and the GMT are other facilities that should, once again, open up our understanding of these just incredibly interesting objects from a fundamental perspective, that is, from the fundamental physics perspective, but also to their astrophysical role in galaxy evolution.
  • Interview with Andrea Ghez. International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ictp.it) (29 September 2021). (interview conducted by Marina Menga)

• I think diversity in science is really important. At the heart, there’s diversity of thinking. People have come from all different backgrounds and bring different training and ideas. Science really benefits from different voices at the table. You can talk about that in terms of gender. You can talk about that in terms of ethnicity, but you can also talk about that in terms of your scientific training and your understanding. The more open we are to new ideas, the better our science is, at the end of the day.
  • Interview with the 2020 Nobel Prize laureate in physics Andrea Ghez on 12 December 2022 during the Nobel Week in Stockholm, Sweden.. nobelprize.org.

• ... so much of research is an uncomfortable place, 'cause you don't know if you're on the right track.
  • (February 28, 2025) "Tracing the Abyss: The Spacetime of a Supermassive Black Hole | World Science Festival". Youtube. (quote at 2:48 of 57:27 in video; Andrea Ghez interviewed by Brian Greene)

External links

• Encyclopedic article on Andrea M. Ghez on Wikipedia
• Andrea Ghez. UCLA Physics & Astronomy.