Shep Doeleman

Shep Doeleman

  • 2020
  • Jury
  • Physical Sciences
  • 2020
  • Jury
  • 2021
  • Jury
  • Physical Sciences

Sheperd Doeleman is an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and the Founding Director of the Event Horizon Telescope. By linking radio dishes around the globe into a virtual Earth-sized telescope with the highest angular resolution possible from the surface of our planet, Shep and his team of 200 researchers captured the first ever image of a supermassive black hole. This image, which took the world by storm when it was released in April 2019, not only revolutionizes our understanding of the universe and heralds a new era of precision, horizon-scale observations of black holes, but has already become an icon, representative of the unimaginable, awe-striking unknowns lurking in space.  Now he focuses on yet another far reaching goal: expanding the Event Horizon Telescope to make the first movies of a black hole event horizon.