Alex Filippenko is a Richard & Rhoda Goldman Distinguished Professor in the Physical Sciences at UC Berkeley. His accomplishments, documented in more than 1070 research papers, have been recognized by several major prizes, including a share of both the Gruber Cosmology Prize (2007) and the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics (2015). One of the world's most highly cited astronomers, he is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences (2009) and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2015), as well as an elected American Astronomical Society (AAS) Fellow (2021). In 2017, he was selected for the Caltech Distinguished Alumni Award. He has won the most prestigious teaching awards at UC Berkeley and has also been voted the "Best Professor" on campus a record 9 times. Selected in 2006 as the Carnegie/CASE National Professor of the Year among doctoral institutions, he has also received the Richard H. Emmons Award for undergraduate teaching (2010) and the AAS Education Prize (2022). He produced five astronomy video courses with "The Great Courses" (see below), coauthored an award-winning astronomy textbook, and appears in more than 120 TV documentaries, including about 50 episodes of "The Universe" series. He has given over 1000 public lectures or other presentations, and he was awarded the 2004 Carl Sagan Prize for Science Popularization. An avid tennis player, runner, hiker, skier, whitewater rafter, snorkeler, and scuba diver, he enjoys world travel and he loves to observe total solar eclipses (19, so far).
Known For
Credits
Cast Credits
How the Universe Works (2010)
Guest starring as Astrophysicist
(17 episodes)
- Episode 9x09: Birth of the Monster Black Holes (May 19, 2021)
- Episode 9x08: Secret Lives of Neutrinos (May 12, 2021)
- Episode 9x07: The Next Supernova (May 5, 2021)
- Episode 9x06: War of the Galaxies (Apr 28, 2021)
- Episode 9x05: Curse of the White Dwarf (Apr 21, 2021)
- Episode 9x01: Journey to a Black Hole (Mar 24, 2021)
- Episode 8x09: Earth's Death Orbit (Feb 27, 2020)
- Episode 8x08: Monsters of the Milky Way (Feb 20, 2020)
- Episode 8x07: Edge of the Universe (Feb 13, 2020)
- Episode 8x05: Secrets of Time Travel (Jan 30, 2020)
- Episode 8x04: Death of the Last Stars (Jan 23, 2020)
- Episode 8x03: Hunt for Alien Evidence (Jan 16, 2020)
- Episode 7x07: Battle of the Dark Universe (Feb 19, 2019)
- Episode 7x02: When Supernovas Strike (Jan 15, 2019)
- Episode 7x01: Nightmares of Neutron Stars (Jan 8, 2019)
- Episode 3x02: The End of the Universe (Jul 16, 2014)
- Episode 3x01: Journey from the Center of the Sun (Jul 9, 2014)