Jill Tarter
SETI Institute
Jill Tarter received her Bachelor of Engineering Physics Degree with Distinction from Cornell University and her Master’s Degree and a Ph.D. in Astronomy from the University of California, Berkeley. She served as Project Scientist for NASA’s SETI program, the High Resolution Microwave Survey, and has conducted numerous observational programs at radio observatories worldwide. Since the termination of funding for NASA’s SETI program in 1993, she has served in a leadership role to secure private funding to continue the exploratory science. Currently, she serves on the management board for the Allen Telescope Array, an innovative array of 350 (when fully realized) 6-m antennas at the Hat Creek Radio Observatory, it will simultaneously survey the radio universe for known and unexpected sources of astrophysical emissions, and speed up the search for radio emissions from other distant technologies by orders of magnitude.
Tarter’s work has brought her wide recognition in the scientific community, including the Lifetime Achievement Award from Women in Aerospace, two Public Service Medals from NASA, Chabot Observatory’s Person of the Year award (1997), Women of Achievement Award in the Science and Technology category by the Women’s Fund and the San Jose Mercury News (1998), and the Tesla Award of Technology at the Telluride Tech Festival (2001). She was elected an AAAS Fellow in 2002 and a California Academy of Sciences Fellow in 2003; she later served as President of the latter. In 2004 Time Magazine named her one of the Time 100 most influential people in the world, and in 2005 Tarter was awarded the Carl Sagan Prize for Science Popularization at Wonderfest, the biannual San Francisco Bay Area Festival of Science.
Tarter is deeply involved in the education of future citizens and scientists. In addition to her scientific leadership at NASA and SETI Institute, Tarter was the Principal Investigator for two curriculum development projects funded by NSF, NASA, and others. The first, the Life in the Universe series, created 6 science teaching guides for grades 3-9 (published 1994-96). Her second project, Voyages Through Time, is an integrated high school science curriculum on the fundamental theme of evolution in six modules: Cosmic Evolution, Planetary Evolution, Origin of Life, Evolution of Life, Hominid Evolution and Evolution of Technology (published 2003). Tarter is a frequent speaker for science teacher meetings and at museums and science centers, bringing her commitment to science and education to both teachers and the public. Many people are now familiar with her work as portrayed by Jodie Foster in the movie Contact.
For another description of her illustrious SETI career see:
Thoughts by Jill Tarter on her time as a Berkeley grad student:
“Compared to my experiences at Cornell, where I did my undergraduate work as the only female in my entering class of 300 engineers, Berkeley was a breath of fresh air. But then again, not always fresh. My graduate class had three women, and one in the class before us. Arriving on campus, us newbies were invited to the Astronomy Department Chairman’s office for an official welcome. The first thing he said to us was “You women are so lucky that all the smart men have been drafted into the Vietnam war.” I don’t remember anything else he said after that. When we were finally dismissed, we went out to the hallway and shared our anger and disappointment at that start. Having other women as confidants and friends made it much easier than Cornell at least.
When I entered grad school, I was married with a 15 month-old daughter. My first year, I was supported as a TA. Commuting from Danville to Berkeley and trying to pose as the perfect wife and mother in my non-university persona, took its toll on my graduate school commitments. The faculty told me that since I had a husband with a good job I really didn’t need the money as much as other grad students, and didn’t continue the appointment. I got a job programming a (very primitive by today’s standards) computer to operate an optical telescope at Leuschner Observatory. It had an eleven instruction set, and no ‘language’; so it had to be programmed in octal, setting all the ones and zeroes. I got good at it, and I liked it.
At the time we didn’t know about dark energy or dark matter, but observations were hinting that we had a ‘missing mass’ problem in our Milky Way Galaxy. My advisor suggested that maybe this mass was hidden in very low mass stars that never managed to fuse H to He, so for the first part of my thesis I attempted to model such objects. Quoting none other than Edmond Land – “Brown is not a color.” – I dubbed these faint wannabe stars Brown Dwarfs. It took another 25 years, and a lot of telescope development, to observe the first one, even though they are, in fact, quite abundant.
I was a grad student for a long time. Near the end, I accepted an NRC postdoc at NASA Ames and tried to wrap up my theoretical thesis now titled “The Interaction of Gas and Galaxies Within Galaxy Clusters”. One of the terms of that NRC postdoc was that you had to begin it within one year of accepting the position – having already had your thesis turned into the university. My advisor kept having new ideas about the thesis, so he still hadn’t signed it near the NRC deadline (the rest of the committee had signed). The very same professor who had insulted us entering female grad students, discovered me in the hallway in my dejected state. Upon hearing why I was so upset, he marched with me to the office of my advisor, and instructed him to SIGN!, which he did. A week later I went off to NASA Ames. “