Michael Bolte

Career

PhD, University of Washington Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics (1987)

Plaskett Postdoctoral Fellow, Herzberg Institute for Astrophysics, Victoria, BC (1988-1990)

Hubble Postdoctoral Fellow, University of California Santa Cruz (1990-1993)

Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of California Santa Cruz (1993–present

Director, University of California Observatories (2005 - 2012)

Research and notable publications

General research area is the nature of the oldest stars in the Galaxy and the early chemical evolution of the Universe. He has published more than 100 papers in the referred literature with ~6000 citations at the end of 2016.

With Craig Hogan of the University of Chicago he published in 1995 an early prediction of what became known as "Dark Energy" as a dominate component of the Universe.

With Kathryn Johnston (Columbia) and Lars Hernquist (Harvard) published one of the early papers on identifying "fossil" structures in the Galactic halo left by tidally shredded dwarf galaxies: "Fossil Signatures of Ancient Accretion Events in the Halo"

With Don Vandenberg (University of Victoria) and Peter Stetson (Herzberg Institute for Astrophysics) he published a new technique for measuring age differences between globular clusters that was insensitive to the cluster distances, reddening and overall metallicity. This has been the standard method since the paper was published in 1990.

Notable professional activities

Member of the CARA Board that manages the W.M. Keck Observatory (2005 - 2012)

Governor, Thirty-Meter Telescope International Observatory Board of Governors (2005–present)

Chair, Thirty-Meter Telescope Science Advisory Committee, 2000-2005

Chair, W.M. Keck Observatory Science Steering Committee, 1998-2005