Professor Edward Groth

Chair, USRA Council of Institutions

Edward Groth received a BS from Caltech in 1968 and a PhD from Princeton University in 1971, both in Physics. He has been a member of the Princeton Physics Faculty since receiving his PhD. His research has included IR astronomy, high-speed optical photometry including timing of the Crab Pulsar, and studies of large scale structure and cosmology.

In 1977 he was selected as the Data and Operations Team Leader for what became the Hubble Space Telescope. After launch in 1990, he was appointed the Deputy Principal Investigator for the Wide Field and Planetary Camera Instrument. He also served on the ad-hoc committee to characterize the error in the primary mirror; a prerequisite was for the fixes put in place at the time of the first servicing mission in late 1993.

Dr. Groth research included carrying out the first HST survey, now known as the “Groth Strip,” and the first weak lensing analysis of HST data. He also participated in Keck observations to obtain spectroscopy for the objects in the survey. He has participated in an Optical SETI project and lately has been serving on the External Independent Readiness Board for NASA’s Navigator program which seeks to discover and characterize Earth-like planets orbiting in the habitable zones of nearby stars.