Geoffrey Marcy, Curriculum Vitae

Geoff Marcy is known internationally for leading the discovery of 70 of the first 100 planets ever found around other stars. He and his collaborator, Paul Butler, discovered the first system of planets ever found around any Sun-like star, namely Upsilon Andromedae, just as our Sun has 8 planets.  Working with Steven Vogt who designed and built the spectrometers, they also discovered the first planets having orbits similar to our Jupiter, eccentric orbits as predicted by Newton, and having masses as low as 15x Earth’s mass.

Working with Greg Henry, they co-discovered the first planet that crosses in front of (transiting) another star, dimming it (HD209458), a technique later used to find Earth-size planets.  Dr. Marcy also discovered a paucity of brown dwarfs orbiting other stars, dubbing it the “Brown Dwarf Desert”.

Dr. Marcy and his student Paul Butler invented the precise Doppler technique that uses iodine gas (informed by Solar physicists at Mount Wilson), and they built the iodine Doppler system for both the Keck and Lick Observatories.  They wrote novel algorithms to analyze spectra of stars to achieve the unprecedented Doppler precision of 2 meters per second, algorithms still used by students at the Univ. of California and Caltech.

Dr. Marcy led the funding of the Automated Planet Finder (APF) telescope at Lick Observatory, obtaining $6.4M from the U.S. Navy and $650K from Ken and Gloria Levy.  Dr. Steven Vogt led the optical design and construction.  Hundreds of students and faculty within the University of California and Caltech still use the iodine-based Doppler system at the APF and Keck telescopes.  Dr. Marcy also obtained the funds for the student telescope on Campbell Hall at UC Berkeley, used by thousands of students every year.

Dr. Marcy with his student Erik Petigura and collaborator Andrew Howard used NASA-Kepler data to determine the Occurrence Rate of Earth-Size Planets around Sun-like stars (Petigura, Howard, and Marcy 2013), showing that about 20% of all Sun-like stars have Earth-size planets with temperatures suitable for liquid water.  The Milky Way thus contains tens of billions of luke-warm Earth-size planets, fertile hunting grounds for life in the universe.

Dr. Marcy, working with Andrew Howard, launched the new spectrometer, the Keck Planet Finder, at the Keck Observatory and he launched a major search for extraterrestrial intelligent life, Breakthrough Listen, funded by Yuri Milner.

His student, Dr. Debra Fischer, led a determination of the occurrence rate of binary stars among the smallest stars, the “M dwarfs”.  Another student, Dr. Lauren Weiss, led a determination of the relationship between planet sizes and masses, implying their density, including rocky planets like Earth.  Their research papers have each garnered over 500 citations. Another student, Dr. Kathryn Peek, determined the enrichment of our Milky Way Galaxy of the heaviest atoms, fused in supernova explosions.  He works with Dr. Beatriz Villarroel in a search for extraterrestrial intelligent life in the VASCO Project.

Dr. Marcy spent his career fighting for equal rights and a welcoming environment for all people, including women, people of color, and all underrepresented groups. Here are the facts about the Title IX investigation that took place in 2015.

Dr. Marcy is now retired, living with his wife of 30 years, helping her build a pollinator-friendly organic farm and butterfly haven.