Christopher D Impey

Biography

Chris Impey is a University Distinguished Professor. For 17 years he was Deputy Head of the Astronomy Department at the University of Arizona, and he is currently Associate Dean of the College of Science. He has over 180 refereed publications and 60 conference proceedings, and his work has been supported by $20 million in grants from NASA and the NSF. As a professor, he has won eleven teaching awards, and has been heavily involved in curriculum and instructional technology development. Chris Impey is a past Vice President of the American Astronomical Society. He has also been an NSF Distinguished Teaching Scholar, a Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar, and the Carnegie Council on Teaching’s Arizona Professor of the Year. He was a co-chair of the Education and Public Outreach Study Group for the recent Decadal Survey of the National Academy of Sciences. In 2009, he was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and in 2014 he was selected as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor.

Chris Impey aims to convey the excitement of astronomy in as many ways as possible to a large public audience. He gives 20 public talks a year, to audiences as large as 4000 and as varied as NASA engineers, first-graders, and Buddhist monks. He has written over forty popular articles on cosmology and astrobiology and authored two introductory textbooks. His has published seven popular science books: The Living Cosmos (2007, Random House), How It Ends (2010, Norton), How It Began (2012, Norton), Talking About Life (2010, Cambridge), Dreams of Other Worlds (2013, Princeton), Humble Before the Void (2014, Templeton), and Beyond (2015, Norton). His first novel, Shadow World, was published in 2013. His Teach Astronomy web site has over 5000 visitors a week, and his YouTube lectures and videos have over half a million views. He is currently teaching two Massive Open Online Classes (MOOCs) to over 70,000 people, most of them living outside the United States.

Awards

• Slipher Award
• National Academy of Sciences, Fall 1998
• Dudley Observatory Award
• Dudley Observatory, Spring 1990
• Education Prize
• American Astronomical Society, Winter 2020
• American Astronomical Society Legacy Fellow
• American Astronomical Society, Fall 2019
• Gresham College Lecturer
• London, England, Fall 2016
• Klumpke Roberts Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Public Understanding and Appreciation of Astronomy
• Astronomical Society of the Pacific, Spring 2016
• Anglo-Australian Observatory, Distinguished Visitor
• Spring 2014
• Eugene Emme Literature Award, American Astronautical Society
• Spring 2014
• Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor
• Spring 2014
• Stanley Kelley Visiting Professor for Distinguished Teaching
• Princeton University, Spring 2012
• Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
• Fall 2009
• Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar
• Fall 2007
• Richard H. Emmons Award for Excellence in College Astronomy Teaching
• Astronomical Society of the Pacific, Spring 2007
• Vice President
• American Astronomical Society, Spring 2006
• Arizona Professor of the Year
• Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Fall 2002
• Distinguished Teaching Scholar
• National Science Foundation, Spring 2002