Biography

Douglas Richstone is Professor and Chair of Astronomy at the University of Michigan, where he has worked since 1980. He has held brief concurrent appointments at the National Observatory of Japan, the Institute for Advanced Study and the Institute for Theoretical Physics at UC Santa Barbara, and as a Guggenheim Fellow.

Richstone received a B.S. with honors in Astronomy from Caltech and a Ph.D. in Astrophysics from Princeton University in 1975. His most active current research activities include dynamics of galaxy centers and the demographics, formation and evolution of massive black holes. He is the leader of the "Nukers", an international collaboration of 15 scientists studying the nuclei of galaxies, and a member of the LISA (Large Interferometry Space Antenna) Science Team. He maintains interests in the estimation of cosmological parameters and formation and evolution of clusters of galaxies.

His service activities over the last decade include the State of Ohio Physics and Astronomy Review of Ph.D. Programs, member and chair of the Space Telescope Institute Council, the Gemini Project Oversight Committee, American Astronomical Society and Dynamical Division Prize Committees and the DDA council, the AURA (Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy) Board of Directors and the NASA Space Science Advisory Committee. He currently is a member of the NASA Origins Subcommittee and chairs the Astronomy and Physics Working Group.