Study Rooms - Cosmology and the Anthropic Principle

Yervant Terzian

Professor, Astronomy

with Yervant Terzian

Yervant Terzian is the David C. Duncan Professor in the Physical Sciences in Cornell University's Department of Astronomy, of which he was chairman from 1979 to 1999. His fields of expertise are the physics of the interstellar medium, galaxies, and radio astronomy.

Terzian is a research professor with the National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center and member of the International Astronomical Union, the International Union of Radio Science, the American Astronomical Society, and the Hellenic Astronomical Society. In 1984 he received the Clark Distinguished Award for Excellence in Teaching. In 1996 he was appointed director of NASA's New York Space Grant Program to enhance science education. He has been awarded Honorary Doctor of Science degrees from the University of Indiana (1989), the Yerevan State University in Armenia (1994), the University of Thessaloniki in Greece (1997), and Union College (1999).

Terzian was elected to the Armenian Academy of Sciences as a foreign member in 1990 and to the American Association for the Advancement of Science as a fellow in 2001. In 2002 he was elected chairman of the U.S. Consortium of Universities and Institutes to construct the Square Kilometer Array giant radio telescope. He was a scientific editor of The Astrophysical Journal from 1989 to 1999 and is the author or co-author of more than 200 scientific publications and the editor of six books, including Carl Sagan's Universe.