Eric Chaisson

Chaisson was born October 26, 1946 in Lowell, Massachusetts. He graduated in physics from University of Massachusetts Lowell in 1968 and earned his PhD at Harvard University in 1972. He has held professor appointments at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, Johns Hopkins University, Space Telescope Science Institute, and Tufts University, where he was for 20 years director of the Wright Center for Science Education while holding research professorships in the department of physics and in the school of education. He is now back at the Harvard College Observatory where, in semi-retirement, he teaches one course each year and works with colleagues at the allied Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory.

He was commissioned an officer in the U.S. Air Force at Lackland Air Force Base in 1970, served on active duty and in the reserves mainly at Mildenhall RAF base and Hanscom USAF base until 1986, after which he was honorably discharged at the rank of captain. He took leave from academia in 1986 at MIT Lincoln Laboratory as staff physicist working on ballistic missile defense amidst occasional consulting and advising for many years with the military-intelligence community. He spent sabbaticals in the 1980s at Wellesley and Haverford colleges, in 1996 was visiting scholar and national lecturer for Phi Beta Kappa, and in 2018 worked on solar energy as visiting professor at University of Notre Dame and Distinguished Fellow at its Institute for Advanced Study.

Chaisson’s research and writing have won several awards, such as the 1977 B.J. Bok Prize for “original radio-astronomy discoveries,” the 1980 Smith-Weld Prize for “best article by a Harvard faculty member,” a 1990 (and 1994) certificate of recognition from NASA with U.S. flag flown aboard the Space Shuttle-31 mission for “exceptional performance on the Hubble Space Telescope program,” as well as unsought fellowships from the Sloan Foundation and the National Academy of Sciences.

His 2018 election to the rank of AAAS Fellow noted his "research and teaching contributions to astrophysics, including co-authoring the nation's most widely used astronomy textbook." He was also a finalist nominee for the 2024 Smithsonian Secretary's national Achievement Award for "consistent and outstanding performance in educational programming that opens doors to lifelong learners, communities and educators elsewhere while serving the nation through distance learning, digital media, publications and exhibitions.”

His book Cosmic Dawn in 1982 received the Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science, the Science Writing Award of the American Institute of Physics and was a finalist for the National Book Award for Nonfiction. The Hubble Wars in 1995 also won the AIP’s Science Writing Award and was hailed in the New York Times as perhaps "the most readable and instructive book on the doing of science since James Watson wrote The Double Helix." Epic of Evolution won the 2007 Kistler Book Award “for “increasing understanding of factors shaping the future of humanity.” And his textbook, Astronomy: The Universe at a Glance, won the Most Innovative New Textbook award in 2016 from the Textbook Authors Association.

In the 1990s, he co-produced and hosted the educational PBS (Maryland Intec) television series, Starfinder, highlighting Hubble Space Telescope discoveries and people, now freely available online at the American Archive of Public Broadcasting. For 20 years, he hosted the annual Wright Lectures on Cosmic Evolution at the Boston Museum of Science, in conjunction with the annual Wright Colloquia at the Piaget Center, Geneva, Switzerland.