Professor Anneila Isabel Sargent BSc PhD DSc FRSE

Anneila Sargent (née Cassells) was born in Fife in 1942, brought up in Burntisland and educated at Burntisland Primary School and Kirkcaldy High School. In 1963, she undertook a BSc Honours degree in Physics at the University of Edinburgh before immigrating to the United States, first studying at the University of California, Berkeley, and then, from 1967, the California Institute of Technology, where she was awarded her PhD.

In addition to being the Ira S. Bowen Professor of Astronomy Emeritus at the California Institute, Anneila is also former Vice-President for Student Affairs. Her research largely focuses on the earliest stages of star and planetary system formation, and she has been heavily involved in developing telescope arrays capable of providing increasingly detailed images of the millimetre-submillimetre universe.

As Director of Caltech’s Owens Valley Radio Observatory (OVRO), she led the Caltech Berkeley-Illinois-Maryland team that constructed the more powerful CARMA array, becoming its first Director in 2003. During the recent construction of the international and transformational ALMA array, she was a member of its Board of Directors (2001 to 2011) and twice served as Chair.

Anneila has been President of the American Astronomical Society, and Chair of NASA’s Space Science Advisory Committee and the US National Research Council (NRC) Board of Physics and Astronomy. She also served on the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council. She is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, an Associate of the Royal Astronomical Society, and a member of the US National Science Board (2011 to 2022), a Presidential appointment.