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Donald Lamb The Louis Block Professor in Astronomy and Astrophysics, the Enrico Fermi Institute and the College, as the Robert A. Millikan Distinguished Service Professor Areas of Expertise:
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Background:
Lamb has focused his research on fundamental, unsolved problems in high-energy astrophysics. He is the mission scientist for NASA's High Energy Transient Explorer-2 satellite. Launched in 2000, HETE-2 detects gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), the most powerful explosions in the universe. Drawing on HETE-2 data, in 2005, Lamb co-authored paper in the journal Nature that helped identify colliding compact stars as the cause of short but powerful and baffling GRBs. At the Flash Center, Lamb heads a team of scientists dedicated to solving the problem of thermonuclear flashes on the surfaces of compact stars. Lamb was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2003.
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