Christopher F. McKee

Christopher McKee received his AB degree from Harvard and his PhD in physics from UC Berkeley. After a year as a postdoctoral fellow at Caltech and several years as an assistant professor of Astronomy at Harvard, he joined the the Physics and Astronomy departments at UC Berkeley in 1974. Since 2012 he has been an Emeritus Professor of Physics and of Astronomy and a Professor of the Graduate School at Berkeley. He has carried out theoretical investigations of a wide variety of astrophysical phenomena, ranging from the interstellar medium of the Galaxy to quasars and cosmic gamma-ray bursts. His current research focuses on the formation of stars: How do low mass stars like the Sun form? How do the massive stars that create most of the heavy elements form? What determines the rate of star formation in galaxies? How did the first stars form? He has received a number of honors for his work: He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and of the American Physical Society. He has been the Sackler Lecturer at Harvard, at the University of Toronto, and at Tel Aviv University, the Bahcall Lecturer at Tel Aviv University, the Antoinette de Vaucouleurs Medalist and Lecturer at the University of Texas, and the 2016 Russell Lecturer of the American Astronomical Society. With Joseph Taylor, he co-chaired the decadal survey in astronomy and astrophysics in 2000 under the auspices of the National Research Council. At UC Berkeley, he served as founding Director of the Theoretical Astrophysics Center, the Director of the Space Sciences Laboratory, the Chair of the Physics Department, the Interim Dean of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, and the Interim Vice Chancellor for Research.