Gerard van Belle
Gerard Theodore van Belle (born October 30, 1968) is an American astronomer who specializes in optical interferometry—the technique that combines light from multiple telescopes to study stars. He is the Director of Science at Lowell Observatory.
Education and early career
- He earned a physics bachelor’s degree from Whitman College in 1990, a master’s degree from Johns Hopkins University in 1993, and a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Wyoming in 1996. His Ph.D. thesis was on angular size measurements of highly evolved stars.
- After his Ph.D., he worked at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory as an instrument architect for the Keck Interferometer, then joined Caltech’s Michelson Science Center in 2003.
- He helped commission the Palomar Testbed Interferometer and the CHARA Array.
Later roles and current work
- In 2007 he joined the European Southern Observatory as instrument scientist for PRIMA on the VLTI, and in 2011 for the MATISSE instrument on the VLTI. Since 2011 he has been a faculty member at Lowell Observatory.
- In May 2017 he became Director of the Navy Precision Optical Interferometer (NPOI) and later served as Chief Scientist there until 2022.
- In May 2024 he was named Director for Science at Lowell Observatory.
Research highlights
- He has used near-infrared interferometers to measure the sizes of hundreds of nearby stars.
- His team achieved the first direct measurement of a star’s shape, for Altair, using the Palomar Testbed Interferometer.
- He has worked on the practical aspects of operating and calibrating astronomical interferometers.
Leadership and honors
- He was President of the IAU Commission 54 on Optical and Infrared Interferometry from 2012 to 2015 (after serving as Vice President and Secretary).
- Asteroid 25155 van Belle is named in his honor.
- He received the 2002 Edward Stone Award for Outstanding Research Publication and the 2018 Significant Sig Award from the Sigma Chi fraternity.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 10:55 (CET).