Science & invention
Geoffrey Marcy
born 1954 · astronomer
Astronomer whose team found many of the first known planets around other stars; born in the Detroit suburb of St. Clair Shores.
- Born
St. Clair Shores, Michigan
age 71- Birth name
- Geoffrey William Marcy
- Field
- Science & invention
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Marcy was born in 1954 in St. Clair Shores, a lakeside suburb northeast of Detroit; his education and career were in California. He studied at UCLA and earned his doctorate at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Working with R. Paul Butler at San Francisco State University and later at Berkeley, he refined the Doppler method of finding planets by the tiny wobble they cause in their stars' light. Their team discovered about 70 of the first 100 known planets beyond the solar system, including in 1999 the first multi-planet system found around a Sun-like star, Upsilon Andromedae, and Marcy was a co-investigator on NASA's Kepler mission. In 2015, after a University of California investigation found that he had sexually harassed students, he resigned his Berkeley professorship.
Highlights
- Co-discoverer of about 70 of the first 100 known exoplanets
- Found the first multi-planet system around a Sun-like star (Upsilon Andromedae)
- Shaw Prize in Astronomy, 2005
- Co-investigator on NASA's Kepler mission