Minter Dialogue with Dr Michael Hauser
Dr. Michael Hauser is an astrophysicist and an Emeritus Astronomer. In his capacity as Deputy Director of the Space Telescope Science Institute, he was instrumental in transforming the Institute into a multi-observatory organization that included the work on the Hubble and James Webb space telescope programs. Michael was a member of the COBE science team and was part of the Nobel prize delegation in Stockholm in 2006 when the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to John Mather and George Smoot for their discoveries of the blackbody form and anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation with NASA’s COBE satellite. In this conversation, we discuss Mike’s career highlights, some of the key discoveries he was part of, the challenges and benefits of international collaborations in light of geopolitics, the value of theory versus observation, the future of space exploration and the nature of ambition in space.
Please send me your questions — as an audio file if you’d like — to nminterdial@gmail.com. Otherwise, below, you’ll find the show notes and, of course, you are invited to comment. If you liked the podcast, please take a moment to rate it here.
To know more about Dr Michael Hauser:
Other mentions of note:
- My interview with cosmonaut, Esther Dyson
- And the podcast with my other NASA interviewee: Donald James, author of Manners Will Take You Where Brains and Money Won’t
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Music credit: The jingle at the beginning of the show is courtesy of my friend, Pierre Journel, author of the Guitar Channel. And, the new sign-off music is “A Convinced Man,” a song I co-wrote and recorded with Stephanie Singer back in the late 1980s (please excuse the quality of the sound!).
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