Victoria M. Kaspi

Leader in high energy astrophysics whose radio and X-ray observations of magnetic neutron stars have profoundly altered understanding of them. Her X-ray observations of the pulsar associated with a young supernova remnant showed that the pulsar was at the precise center of the remnant and cast into doubt previous methods of dating pulsars by their spin rate. Other of her X-ray observations showed that soft gamma repeaters, which produce irregular gamma ray bursts, and anomalous X-ray pulsars, which are slowly rotating pulsars with high magnetic fields, could both be explained as neutron stars with exceptionally strong magnetic fields. She also helped discover the pulsar with the fastest known rotation rate, star clusters with a high concentration of pulsars, and the cosmic recycling of a slow-spinning pulsar into a much faster millisecond pulsar.