Who is Brian Schmidt?
Brian Schmidt is an astrophysicist at the Australian National University who shared the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics for discovering that the expansion of the universe is accelerating. He later served as Vice-Chancellor of ANU.
Schmidt was born in Montana in the United States in 1967 and grew up in Montana and Alaska. He studied at the University of Arizona and Harvard University before moving to Australia in 1995.
In the 1990s, Schmidt led the High-Z Supernova Search Team, which measured distant exploding stars known as type Ia supernovae. These supernovae act as standard candles for measuring cosmic distances.
The accelerating universe
In 1998, Schmidt's team and a rival group led by Saul Perlmutter found that distant supernovae were fainter than expected. This showed that the universe's expansion is speeding up, driven by a mysterious force now called dark energy.
Schmidt shared the 2011 Nobel Prize with Saul Perlmutter and Adam Riess. He conducted much of his work at the Mount Stromlo Observatory near Canberra.
Schmidt became Vice-Chancellor of the Australian National University in 2016. He is also known for owning a vineyard near Canberra, where he produces wine called Maipenrai.
Did You Know?
Schmidt holds both American and Australian citizenship.