Michael S. Turner

• Member, FRA Board of Directors for Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
• Rauner Distinguished Service Professor in the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics, the Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics and the Department of Physics at the University of Chicago

Michael Turner served as Assistant Director for the Mathematical and Physical Science Directorate at the National Science Foundation (NSF) from 2003-2006, as Chief Scientist at Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) from 2006 – 2008 and for twenty years was a member of the Theoretical Astrophysics Group at Fermilab, which he founded with Edward Kolb.  Turner helped to bring together astronomers and particle physicists to create the interdisciplinary field of particle astrophysics and cosmology.  He has made important contributions to cosmology in the areas of particle dark matter and its role in the formation of structure in the universe, inflationary cosmology, and understanding how dark energy (a term he coined) is causing the expansion of the Universe to speed up.

Turner is a member of NRC Board on Physics and Astronomy, the Chair of the Physics Section of the NAS, and currently serves on the NRC’s Committee on the Rationale and Goals of the U.S. Civil Space Program. Turner is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and American Association for the Advancement of Science.