Adam Burrows

Position
Professor of Astrophysical Sciences
Role
(Associated Faculty)
Office Phone
Office
105 Peyton Hall, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ
Bio/Description

Adam Burrows is a Full Professor of Astrophysical Sciences at Princeton University, is the Director of the Princeton Planets and Life Certificate Program, and was recently on the Board of Trustees of the Aspen Center for Physics. He received his undergraduate degree in Physics from Princeton and his Ph.D. in Physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His primary research interests are supernova theory, exoplanet and brown dwarf theory, planetary atmospheres, computational astrophysics, and nuclear astrophysics. Tools and methodologies developed in support of these studies include numerical hydrodynamics, radiative transfer, nuclear and particle physics, chemistry, molecular spectroscopy, equations of state of exotic matter, and magnetohydrodynamics.

Well-known as a pioneer in the theory of exoplanets, brown dwarfs, and supernovae, he has written numerous influential papers and reviews on these subjects during the last ~30 years.  He has collaborated with more than 250 co-authors on more than 350 papers and given more than 300 invited talks and colloquia. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a Fellow of the American Physical Society, the 2010 Beatrice M. Tinsley Centennial Professor, and a former Alfred P. Sloan Fellow. He is a past Chair of the Board on Physics and Astronomy (BPA) of the National Academy of Sciences; was the BPA Liaison to the 2010 Decadal Survey of Astronomy; and has been a consultant for the American Museum of Natural History in New York. He has served on the Committee on Astronomy and Astrophysics (CAA) of the NAS; on the NAS committee for the Midterm Assessment of the Implementation of the Astro2010 Survey; on the NRC Rare Isotope Science Assessment Committee; on the Subcommittee on the Implementation of the DOE Long-Range Plan for Nuclear Physics; as the Chair of the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (KITP) Advisory Board; as the co-Chair of NASA's Universe Subcommittee; as the Chair of NASA's Origins Subcommittee; as a co-Chair of NASA's Strategic Roadmapping Committee "Search for Earth-like Planets"; as a co-Chair of NASA's Origins/SEUS Roadmapping committee; as a primary author of NASA 2003 Origins Roadmap; and as the Chair of the Theoretical Astrophysics Program of the University of Arizona, where he was a professor before assuming a professorship at Princeton in 2008.