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Judy Pipher

Nationality: American

Bio: Judith L. (Judy) Pipher received her PhD in 1971 from Cornell University, having completed her thesis research in the then brand-new area of rocket infrared astronomy. Because infrared detectors sensitive at 100 microns and at submillimeter wavelengths were not commercially available, graduate students constructed and tested detectors and filters, and then used them to observe objects in our galaxy, external galaxies, and the submillimeter background radiation. At that time there were only a few dozen infrared astronomers in the USA: by 2008 the field of infrared astronomy had exploded in size. The advent of sensitive, ever-larger format infrared detector arrays, and large ground-based telescopes, as well as cooled space astronomical telescopes, has led to revolutionary new astronomical results on every conceivable topic. Pipher has participated in the revolution: in the 1970s and 1980s, she observed on the airborne Kuiper Infrared Observatory, as well as on ground-based telescopes, sometimes with facility instruments, and sometimes with cameras developed at the University of Rochester, where she has been a faculty member since graduate school. Pipher has concentrated on star formation studies, and was on the team developing the Infrared Array Camera for what is now known as the Spitzer Space Telescope. Since its launch in 2003 she has concentrated on detector array development as well as on star formation using complementaryresults from Spitzer and from ground-based telescopes.

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