Astronomer Donald N.B. Hall of the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa has been named a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Election as an AAAS fellow is an honor bestowed upon AAAS members by their peers.
Hall was elected as an AAAS fellow “for distinguished contributions to the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomy at the University of Hawaiʻi and on Mauna Kea, and infrared telescope, instrument, and sensor technology.”
Hall served as the director of the UH Institute for Astronomy from 1984 until 1997. Prior to that he served as deputy director of the Space Telescope Science Institute, which operates the science program for the Hubble Space Telescope. He currently works at the Institute for Astronomy’s office in Hilo.
The main focus of his work is developing infrared detector arrays for astronomical instruments that are mounted on telescopes on the ground and in space. The Hawaiʻi detector arrays he has worked to develop have already been flown on NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, Deep Impact comet mission and Wide Field Survey Explorer. Fifteen of them, totaling over 60 megapixels, are now being integrated into scientific instruments of the James Webb Space Telescope for launch in 2018. His arrays are also in use at ground-based observatories around the world, including all eight optical-infrared telescopes on Mauna Kea.
Hall will be one of the 388 new fellows to receive an official certificate and a gold and blue (representing science and engineering, respectively) rosette pin on February 15, during the 2014 AAAS Annual Meeting in Chicago.
Read the UH Mānoa news release for more information.
