Professor Jay M Pasachoff

Jay M. Pasachoff, Field Memorial Professor of Astronomy at Williams College, teaches the astronomy survey course. He is also Director of the Hopkins Observatory there. He received his undergraduate and graduate degrees from Harvard and was then at Caltech, where he has also had recent sabbatical leaves. He has observed 69 solar eclipses. He also studies occultations of stars by Pluto and other objects in the outer Solar System. Pasachoff is Chair of the Working Group on Eclipses of the...See more

Jay M. Pasachoff, Field Memorial Professor of Astronomy at Williams College, teaches the astronomy survey course. He is also Director of the Hopkins Observatory there. He received his undergraduate and graduate degrees from Harvard and was then at Caltech, where he has also had recent sabbatical leaves. He has observed 69 solar eclipses. He also studies occultations of stars by Pluto and other objects in the outer Solar System. Pasachoff is Chair of the Working Group on Eclipses of the International Astronomical Union and was Chair of the American Astronomical Society's Historical Astronomy Division. He is also co-editor of Teaching and Learning Astronomy (Cambridge, 2005) and Innovation in Astronomy Education (Cambridge, 2008). He received the American Astronomical Society's Education Prize (2003); the Janssen Prize from the Société Astronomique de France (2012), and the Richtmyer Memorial Lecture Award, American Association of Physics Teachers (2017). In 2019, he was awarded the Klumpke-Roberts Award for his outstanding contribution to the public understanding and appreciation of astronomy. Asteroid (5100) Pasachoff is named after him. See less