Described as “one of the unsung heroes of the exoplanet revolution,” Edward Dunham ’74 is credited with revolutionizing astronomical
research and instrumentation.
After graduating from Carleton as a physics major, Dunham earned a PhD in astronomy from Cornell University, where he was part of the team that discovered rings around Uranus, causing a paradigm shift in planetary science. Over the next three decades, he continued to pursue groundbreaking experiments at MIT, NASA’s Ames Research Center, and Lowell Observatory.
At NASA, Dunham served as project scientist for the Kuiper Airborne Observatory and deputy project scientist for the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) airborne telescope program. In parallel, Dunham helped to start the Kepler planet-hunting project, carrying out laboratory detector tests. In 1996, NASA awarded Dunham its Exceptional Service Medal.
At Lowell Observatory, Dunham was hired to lead the institution into its second century as its first instrument scientist. Under Dunham’s direction, Lowell expanded its instrumentation shop, significantly improved its telescopes, and designed the Lowell Discovery Telescope, the fifth-largest optical telescope in the continental United States. Dunham was also the principal investigator for the development, construction, and deployment of a novel and powerful instrument for occultation observations from the SOFIA project. Using this instrument, Dunham successfully carried out a challenging observation of Pluto that provided unique information on the evolution of the dwarf planet’s atmosphere. Dunham served as the science team lead for the Kepler mission, which discovered the universe contains billions of exoplanets, again revolutionizing humankind’s understanding of the cosmos. A subsequent mission, NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), also directly benefited from Dunham’s expertise, as it found the first potentially habitable Earth-sized planet outside our solar system.
Dunham retired as one of the most accomplished developers of astronomical instrumentation in the world, whose work has been central to unraveling the secrets of the many outer planets’ atmospheres as well as the sizes and shapes of many minor planets. He and his wife, Jean Reynolds Dunham ’74, live in Flagstaff, Arizona.