Jean L. Turner is an astrophysicist and distinguished professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of California, Los Angeles.^[1] She was lead author on research and discovery of a particular star cluster in the dwarf galaxy NGC 5253, considered 'remarkable' for being an extremely dusty gas cloud and having highly efficient star formation.^{[2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15]}

Career

Turner received her AB in astronomy from Harvard University and her PhD degree in astronomy from UC Berkeley. She was a Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian Fellow (1984-1986), a visiting associate at Caltech (2004), Caroline Herschel visiting fellow at Space Telescope (2007), and visiting scientist at the Joint ALMA Observatory (2011). Turner was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2006,^[16][17] and the UCLA Physics and Astronomy Department chair from 2014 to 2018.^[1]

She is an active member of the International Astronomical Union,^[18] and has also contributed to the development and commissioning of the Hat Creek Millimeter Interferometer and the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array.^[19]

Research areas

Her research specialty is in the gaseous environments of young 'super star clusters' in local galaxies, including O star winds and star formation efficiency.^[20] The youngest star clusters are typically embedded in dusty gas clouds, and therefore hidden from optical telescopes, so observations are done with infrared and millimeter wavelength telescopes.^[21] Such studies can help explain the differences in early Milky Way and Population III stars.^[19]

References

External links

• Jean L. Turner publications indexed by Google Scholar