J Roger Angel

Roger Angel, an astronomer, is also an expert and innovator in the field of astronomical telescopes and instrumentation. Angel conceives and builds new devices for both ground-based and space-borne observation. He created a new method of casting glass that allows the construction of very large mirrors for ground-based telescopes, a method now being used in the formation of the world’s largest single-mirror telescope. He is working to develop space-borne interferometric instrumentation that is potentially capable of the direct detection of Earth-like planets around other stars. Angel is Regents Professor and a professor of astronomy and of optical sciences at the University of Arizona, and director of the University’s Steward Observatory Mirror Laboratory and of the Center for Astronomical Adaptive Optics. He served previously as an associate professor of physics at Columbia University (1969-1973). He has contributed chapters to many books and published numerous articles in such journals as Nature, Acta Astronomica, and The Astrophysical Journal. Angel received a B.A. (1963) from St. Peter’s College, Oxford University, M.Sc. (1966) from the California Institute of Technology, and D. Phil. (1967) from Oxford University.