Victoria Kaspi

Happy Birthday Victoria Kaspi! The astrophysicist and director of the McGill Space Institute at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, was born in Austin, Texas, in 1967. She earned her PhD from Princeton University in 1993. Kaspi’s research focuses on neutron stars, the extraordinarily dense remnants of giant stars after they explode as supernovas. By observing pulsars (neutron stars that emit beams of radio waves), Kaspi has discovered the fastest spinning neutron star (716 rotations per second) and tested Einstein’s general theory of relativity. Her research is helping scientists learn how stars evolve and how matter behaves under extreme conditions. Earlier this year Kaspi became the first woman to win the $1 million Herzberg medal, the highest honor awarded by Canada’s Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC). She plans to use the money to help fund the new CHIME radio telescope in Canada, which will search for the sources of mysterious energetic eruptions of radio waves known as fast radio bursts. (Photo credit: NSERC)

Date in History: 30 June 1967