Jeremiah P. Ostriker


Jeremiah Paul Ostriker was an American astrophysicist and a professor of astronomy at Columbia University and a Charles A. Young Professor Emeritus at Princeton, where he also served as a senior research scholar. Ostriker also served as a university administrator as Provost of Princeton University.

Early life and education

Ostriker was born on the Upper West Side of Manhattan to Martin Ostriker, the proprietor of a clothing company, and Jeanne Ostriker, a public school teacher. He had three siblings. Ostriker became interested in science at a young age, and he later recounted teaching himself difficult subjects, including calculus, writing: "I felt that I learned better on my own than through school". He received his B.A. from Harvard and his PhD from the University of Chicago.

Career and research

After earning his Ph.D. at Chicago, he conducted post-doctoral work at the University of Cambridge. From 1971 to 1995, Ostriker was a professor at Princeton, and served as Provost there from 1995 to 2001. From 2001 to 2003, he was appointed Plumian Professor of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy at the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge. He then returned to Princeton as the Charles Young Professor of Astronomy and later served as the Charles A. Young Professor Emeritus. He became a professor of astronomy at Columbia in 2012.
Ostriker was very influential in advancing the theory that most of the mass in the universe is not visible at all, but consists of dark matter. His research also focused on the interstellar medium, galaxy evolution, cosmology and black holes. On June 20, 2013 Ostriker was given the White House Champions of Change Award for his role in initiating the Sloan Digital Sky Survey project, which makes all of its astronomical data sets available publicly on the Internet.
Ostriker was also known for the Ostriker–Peebles criterion, relating to the stability of galactic formation.

Personal life and death

Ostriker married noted poet and essayist Alicia Ostriker in 1958, and they had three children: Rebecca, Eve, and Gabriel. Like her father, Eve became an astrophysics professor at Princeton University, in 2012, the same year as her father's retirement. Jeremiah and Alicia Ostriker were residents of Princeton, New Jersey.
Ostriker died of renal disease in Manhattan, on April 6, 2025, at the age of 87.

Publications

As of April 2021, Ostriker's articles have been cited over 85,910 times and he has an h-index of 130 according to the NASA Astrophysics Data System including:

Awards and honors

Ostriker won numerous awards and honors including: