| Sheperd S. Doeleman | |
| Birth Name: | Sheperd Nacheman |
| Birth Date: | 1967 |
| Birth Place: | Wilsele, Belgium |
| Field: | Astrophysics |
| Workplaces: | Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, Center for Astrophysics Harvard & Smithsonian |
| Thesis Title: | Imaging Active Galactic Nuclei with 3mm-VLBI |
| Thesis Url: | https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/32655/33226764-MIT.pdf?sequence=2 |
| Thesis Year: | 1995 |
| Doctoral Advisors: | Alan E.E. Rogers and Bernard F. Burke |
| Awards: | Bruno Rossi Prize (2020) Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics (2020) Henry Draper Medal (2021) Prix Georges Lemaître (2023)[1] |
| Spouses: | )--> |
| Partners: | )--> |
Sheperd "Shep" S. Doeleman (born 1967) is an American astrophysicist. His research focuses on super massive black holes with sufficient resolution to directly observe the event horizon. He is a senior research fellow at the Center for Astrophysics Harvard & Smithsonian and the Founding Director[2] of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) project.[3] He led the international team of researchers that produced the first directly observed image of a black hole.[4] [5]
Doeleman was named one of Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People of 2019.[6]
He was born in Wilsele in Belgium to American parents. The family returned to the United States a few months later, and he grew up in Portland, Oregon. He was later adopted by his stepfather Nelson Doeleman.[7]
He earned a B.A. at Reed College in 1986 and then spent a year in Antarctica working on multiple space-science experiments at McMurdo Station. He then went on to earn a PhD in astrophysics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1995; his dissertation was titled Imaging Active Galactic Nuclei with 3mm-VLBI. He has worked at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn and returned to MIT in 1995, where he later became assistant director of the Haystack Observatory.[8] [9]
His research has focused in particular on problems that require ultra-high resolving power. He is known for heading the group of over 200 researchers at research institutions in several countries that produced the first aperture synthesis image of a black hole.