Riccardo Giacconi

            Riccardo Giacconi was born on October 6th, 1931 in Genoa, Italy. He graduated with a Ph.D. from the University of Milan in 1959. He is known for being a famous physicist. After graduating in 1959, he joined the American Science and Engineering research firm. Fourteen years later, Giacconi joined the Harvard-Smithsonian center for Astrophysics. He spent several years of his life directing both the Space Telescope Science Institute and the European Southern Observatory. He was elected president of Associated Universities Incorporated, which operates the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, in 1999.  Giacconi is still alive today and still contributing to the astronomical world.

            While Riccardo Giacconi was working for these groups, he was also researching x-ray astronomy. He started this research in 1959, nearly a decade after astronomers first recorded x-rays from the Sun. His research led to the discovery of x-rays coming from Scorpius X-1 and the crab nebula. In 2002, Giacconi received the Nobel Prize for Physics for his research and discoveries of cosmic sources of x-rays. In addition to his research, Giacconi built the Einstein Observatory in 1978. This observatory was the first high-definition x-ray telescope. He also proposed a more intense telescope which was launched in 1999 called the Chandra X-Ray Observatory. Riccardo's research and telescopes allowed people to be more aware of x-ray's in space, and allowed future astronomers to learn even more about cosmic sources of x-rays.