R. Paul Butler

Paul Butler is an astronomer who searches for extrasolar planets. He and Geoffrey Marcy were the first to discover extrasolar planets orbiting around a sun-like star. He has co-discovered two thirds of the approximately 233 extrasolar planets discovered to date.

He received a BA and an MS from San Francisco State University, completing a Master's thesis with Geoffrey Marcy, and then completed his doctoral studies at the University of Maryland, College Park in 1993. His graduate work focused on the design of the very sensitive spectrograph required to detect extrasolar planets by detecting variations in the radial velocity of their parent stars. Since 1999 he has been a staff scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science.

Butler and collaborator Geoffrey Marcy shared the Henry Draper Medal in 2001. He was named Discover Magazine's "Space Scientist of the Year" in 2003.

ee also

* List of stars with confirmed planets

References

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/050331_asimov_debate.html

External links

* [http://astron.berkeley.edu/~paul/ Paul Butler's Home Page] at the [http://www.ciw.edu/ Carnegie Institution for Science]