Edmund Bertschinger Named Head of MIT Physics

Edmund Bertschinger, MIT professor of physics and division head, astrophysics, has been appointed head of the department of physics, effective July 1. Bertschinger succeeds Marc Kastner, who will become dean of the School of Science. In making the announcement, Kastner said, "Ed is a deep, broad physicist, and a superb educator of undergraduates and graduate students. He has done an outstanding job leading our astrophysics effort, and I am confident that he will be an excellent department head." In his role at the MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, Bertschinger leads a program investigating the formation of cosmic structure after the big bang, the physics of dark matter both in the early universe and in forming galaxies, and the physical processes governing matter and radiation close to black holes. He is a Guggenheim Fellow, a Fellow of the American Physical Society, and received the Helen B. Warner Prize from the American Astronomical Society and MIT's 2002 Buechner Teaching prize for his undergraduate and graduate classes in relativity. He received his PhD in astrophysical sciences from Princeton University in 1984 and did postdoctoral research at the University of Virginia and the University of California at Berkeley, and became a faculty member at MIT in 1986.