Riccardo Giacconi

Riccardo Giacconi was an Italian American astrophysicist who laid the foundations of X-ray astronomy. Beginning with rocket-borne detectors in the late 1950s, he developed space-based instruments for observing cosmic X-ray sources invisible to conventional telescopes, progressing through the Uhuru satellite, the Einstein Observatory and eventually the Chandra X-ray Observatory, launched in 1999. He was awarded the 2002 Nobel Prize in Physics for pioneering contributions to astrophysics that led to the discovery of cosmic X-ray sources. Giacconi earned his degree from the University of Milan and received a Fulbright Fellowship in 1956 to study at Indiana University, later serving as the first permanent director of the Space Telescope Science Institute from 1981 to 1993, as Director General of the European Southern Observatory from 1993 to 1999, and as a professor at Johns Hopkins University from 1982 until his death in 2018. He also received the Wolf Prize in Physics in 1987 and the National Medal of Science in 2003.