Antoinette de Vaucouleurs Memorial Public Lecture

Explore the early universe with Rachel Somerville of the Flatiron Institute at this year's Antoinette de Vaucouleurs Memorial Public Lecture. In her talk, “In Pursuit of the First Galaxies and Supermassive Black Holes,” Somerville will discuss groundbreaking discoveries from the James Webb Space Telescope and what they reveal about the formation of galaxies and supermassive black holes in the universe's earliest days.

Rachel Somerville is a senior research scientist at the Center for Computational Astrophysics, where she was the founding group leader of the galaxy formation group. She previously held positions as the Downsbrough Chair in Astrophysics at Rutgers University, staff scientist at Space Telescope Science Institute, and Senior Group Leader at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, among others. Her interests are in theoretical modeling of all aspects of galaxy formation and the co-evolution of supermassive black holes and galaxies, with a focus on making detailed, robust connections between theory and observations.