Quick Facts
Biography
Kenneth Libbrecht is a professor of physics and department chairman at the California Institute of Technology.
Libbrecht received a B.S. in physics at Caltech in 1980. He was originally trained as a solar astronomer, studying under Robert Dicke at Princeton University and received his Ph.D. in 1984. However, much of his recent research has focused on the properties of ice crystals, particularly the structure of snowflakes. In addition to his professional papers, he has published several popular books illustrating the variety of snowflake forms:
The Snowflake: Winter's Secret Beauty (with Patricia Rasmussen photography)
Ken Libbrecht's Field Guide to Snowflakes
The Little Book of Snowflakes
The Art of the Snowflake: A Photographic Album
Four of Libbrecht's pictures were selected by the United States Postal Service as designs for stamps for the 2006 winter holiday season, with a total printing of approximately 3 billion stamps [1]. Libbrecht won the 2004 National Outdoor Book Award (Nature and the Environment category) for The Snowflake: Winter's Secret Beauty.