Rachel Bean, Ph.D.

Cornell University

Rachel Bean is an astrophysicist whose research focuses on understanding the cosmological properties of gravity, dark energy, neutrinos and primordial inflation using observations of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and the large scale structure of galaxies and clusters of galaxies. Bean received her PhD from Imperial College London in 2002 and held a postdoctoral fellowship at Princeton before joining the faculty at Cornell in 2005. She is a Professor of Astronomy at Cornell and currently serves as the Senior Associate Dean for Math and Science in the College of Arts and Sciences. Bean is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, a recipient of a Presidential Early Career Award in Science and Engineering (PECASE), from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and a Cottrell Scholar Award, for excellence in research and teaching. As a member of the NASA Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) science team, she was a co-recipient of a NASA Group Achievement Award, the 2012 Gruber Prize and the 2018 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics.

Subscribe to MPS announcements and other foundation updates