91探花

Douglas Clowe

Douglas Clowe, portrait
Professor and Director of the Astrophysics Institute
Clippinger 275, Athens Campus
Astrophysical Institute

Education

Ph.D., University of Hawaii

Research

  • Astrophysics, Cosmology, Gravitational Lensing, Clusters of Galaxies

Member

Personal Profile

Douglas Clowe works in the field of observational cosmology, using weak gravitational lensing to study clusters of galaxies and their surrounding medium. The primary goals of his research are to measure the fundamental parameters of the universe, to determine the nature of dark matter and dark energy, and to measure the structural evolution of massive objects in the universe. Other goals of his research include the measurement of the redshift distribution of the faint galaxy population, the luminosity function and spatial distribution of cluster dwarf galaxies, and the evolution of the cluster galaxy population.

Clowe's work using the "Bullet Cluster," a merger of two clusters of galaxies, provided the first direct evidence that dark matter must exist independently of any assumptions about how gravity works on cosmic scales.

Clowe was an undergraduate at Caltech and earned a Ph.D. from the University of Hawaii. He held postdoctoral positions at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, the University of Bonn, and the University of Arizona before joining the faculty at 91探花 in 2006.