Martha P. Haynes, the Goldwin Smith Professor of Astronomy at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, has received the 2019 Catherine Wolfe Bruce Gold Medal from the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. The medal is presented annually to an astronomer in recognition of a lifetime of outstanding achievement and contributions to astrophysics research.
Over the course of her career, Dr. Haynes’ research has contributed to the understanding of the composition, interactions, distribution, and evolution of galaxies in the universe. Additionally, she has been a leader and advocate for the development of instruments to expand our ability to probe the radio universe. She contributed to improvements made to the Arecibo Radio Telescope in Puerto Rico, culminating with the ALFALFA HI Survey, which discovered 31,000 galaxies. She has also studied large clumps and clusters of galaxies.
In addition to her teaching duties at Cornell, Dr. Haynes serves as chair of the board of directors of the Cerro Chajnantor Atacama Telescope initiative to build the high-altitude, CCAT-prime radio telescope in northern Chile that will examine the early universe to investigate galaxy and star formation. She is also the scientific lead of the ALFALFA Undergraduate Team, which promotes collaborative research by faculty and students at 23 academic institutions across the United States and Puerto Rico.
Earlier in her career, Dr. Haynes received other prestigious honors including the Henry Draper Medal from the National Academy of Science, and elections to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences. She is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and has been appointed as a distinguished lecturer at Princeton University and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, among other institutions.
Dr. Haynes is a graduate of Wellesley College in Massachusetts, where she majored in physics and astronomy. She holds a master’s degree and Ph.D. both from Indiana University.