Huchra is AAS president-elect

An astronomy professor at the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) has taken office as president-elect of the American Astronomical Society.

John P. Huchra, the Robert O. and Holly Thomis Doyle Professor of Cosmology at Harvard University, where he is also senior adviser to the provost on research policy, assumed his role at the society’s annual meeting in May. He will serve as president-elect until 2008, when he becomes president for a two-year term, succeeding J. Craig Wheeler (see Physics Today, July 2005, page 73 ).

“I hope to … successfully represent the excitement of astronomy and the importance of basic research in astronomy and astrophysics to the public and to our government,” Huchra told Physics Today. “I hope to strengthen relationships between and among the community, the agencies responsible for federal funding of astronomy, and the government.”

Huchra’s research focus is observational cosmology, particularly the study of the distribution and dynamics of matter and of the formation of structure in the universe. As part of his research, he has completed two important galactic surveys. One maps the distribution of nearby galaxies. The second uncovered evidence that almost all galaxies lie on thin, bubble-like surfaces and of what remains the largest single structure seen in any survey, the “Great Wall.”

Huchra graduated from MIT in 1970 and received a PhD in astronomy from Caltech in 1976. He joined the CfA in 1976 as a postdoctoral fellow. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1993.

In other AAS election results, Lee Hartmann (University of Michigan), presently an AAS councilor, will serve a three-year term as society vice president, and John Graham (Carnegie Institution of Washington) will serve a three-year term as secretary. Richard Green (Large Binocular Telescope Observatory) is the new publications board chair, and Edward Churchwell (University of Wisconsin) is the society’s new member of the US National Committee for the International Astronomical Union.

Also, Chryssa Kouveliotou (NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center), Felix Lockman (National Radio Astronomy Observatory), and Nicholas Suntzeff (Texas A&M University) will serve three-year terms as AAS councilors.