Professor Christopher McKee
Prof. Christopher McKee, who gave the Bahcall lecture in the framework of the Emilio Segre Distinguished Lectures in Physics Endowed by Raymond and Beverly Sackler for the academic year 2011/2012, is Professor in the Physics and Astronomy Departments at the University of California, Berkeley.
Prof. McKee received his A.B. (Bachelor of Arts) from Harvard and his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of California, Berkeley (1970). After a brief stay at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, he spent a year as a postdoctoral fellow at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech, 1970). He then moved to Harvard as an Assistant Professor of Astronomy for three years (1971-1974), and in 1974 he joined as a Professor the Physics and Astronomy Departments at the University of California, Berkeley. At the University of California, he served as the founding Director of the Theoretical Astrophysics Center (1985), the Director of the Space Sciences Laboratory (1985-1998), the Chair of the Physics Department (2000-2004) and he was appointed Interim Dean of Mathematical and Physical Sciences and Interim Vice Chancellor for Research (2015). Since 2012, he has been an Emeritus Professor of Physics and of Astronomy and a Professor of the Graduate School.
Prof. McKee is a world renowned leading theoretical astrophysicist, known for his seminal contributions to the theory of star-formation and associated processes in the interstellar medium. He has received a number of honors for his work: He was elected a Legacy Fellow of the American Astronomical Society (2020). He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a member of the American Physical Society. He was the Antoinette de Vaucouleurs Medalist. With Nobel Prize Prof. Joseph Taylor, he co-chaired in 2000 the NASA Astronomy and Astrophysics Survey Committee (the "decadal review"). He has been both a Miller Professor and a Guggenheim Fellow.
Prof. McKee has devoted much of his research to studying processes in the interstellar medium, including evaporation of clouds, the structure of shock waves in atomic and molecular gas, and the dynamics of blast waves in both homogeneous and inhomogeous media. In collaboration with Prof. Jeremiah Ostriker (Columbia University), he developed the three-phase model of the interstellar medium, which has been widely used to organize and interpret observational data.
Prof. McKee received his A.B. degree from Harvard and his Ph.D. in Physics from UC Berkeley in 1970. After a brief stay at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, he spent a year as a postdoctoral fellow at Caltech. He then went to Harvard as an assistant professor of astronomy for three years, and in 1974 he joined the Physics and Astronomy Departments at Berkeley University. He served as founding Director of the Theoretical Astrophysics Center in 1985, and from 1985-1998 he directed the Space Sciences Laboratory. He was Chair of the Physics Department from 2000-2004. He was appointed Interim Dean of Mathematical and Physical Sciences and Interim Vice Chancellor for Research in 2015.
Prof. McKee is a world renowned leading theoretical astrophysicist, known for his seminal contributions to the theory of star-formation and associated processes in the interstellar medium. He has received a number of honors for his work: He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a member of the American Physical Society. He has been a Sackler Lecturer at Harvard, at the University of Toronto and at Tel Aviv University. He also was the Antoinette de Vaucouleurs Medalist and Lecturer at the University of Texas. With Joseph Taylor, he co-chaired the decadal survey in astronomy and astrophysics in 2000 under the auspices of the National Research Council. He has been both a Miller Professor and a Guggenheim Fellow.
