Doctor of Science

Sandra Faber is an observational astronomer whose research interests include cosmology and galaxy formation. A University Professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, for more than 40 years, Faber is also a staff member at the University of California Observatories. Among her many contributions to astronomy is the Faber-Jackson relation, the first known structural scaling law for galaxies—in this case, the relation between the mass of a galaxy and the speed of stars that orbit within it. In addition, Faber’s work has uncovered huge irregularities in the expansion of the universe caused by the perturbing effects of gravity from superclusters of galaxies. With colleagues, she used the Hubble Space Telescope to penetrate the cores of galaxies, revealing the ubiquitous black holes at their centers that have up to several billion times as much mass as the sun. In 1984, Faber and two colleagues developed the “cold dark matter” theory of galaxy formation,which has since become the standard paradigm for galaxy and cluster formation in our universe. Faber played a leading role in construction of Hawaii’s Keck telescopes and is an expert on the Hubble Space Telescope, currently heading a project which aims to discover how galaxies in our universe formed and evolved.

Faber holds a bachelor’s degree in physics from Swarthmore and a Ph.D. in astronomy from Harvard. She was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1985 and the American Philosophical Society in 2001. She has received the Bruce Medal from the Astronomical Society of the Pacific (2012), the Heineman Prize from the American Astronomical Society (1985) and Harvard’s Centennial Medal (2006). In 2009, she received the Bower Award and Prize for Achievement in Science from The Franklin Institute “for three decades of research on the formation and evolution of galaxies, and for her altruistic dedication to building new tools for the astronomy community.” Faber holds membership in the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and, in 2013, received the National Medal of Science from President Obama.