Jack Tueller '71Astrophysicist, Laboratory for High Energy Astrophysics
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Ultimately a double major in physics and mathematics, Jack Tueller ’71 began life as college student at Puget Sound as a philosophy major before migrating to math. “At the time if you were a math major, you had to take classes in physics, which really helped me,” Jack says. “It forced me to broaden my horizons and gave me professors like Dr. Zdenko Danes, who was a terrifying presence, but also a terrific teacher, and one of many professors who had a profound influence on my development.”
Jack eventually earned a doctorate in physics from Washington University in St. Louis, Mo., and joined the Laboratory for High Energy Astrophysics at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. There his primary research interest is high-resolution hard X-ray and gamma-ray spectroscopy of astrophysical sources, with particular interest in nucleosynthesis, especially detecting and interpreting the shapes of lines from radioactive decay. From 1992 to 1996, Jack served as the principal investigator for NASA’s Gamma-Ray Imaging Spectrometer (GRIS), and beginning in 1996, was principal investigator of the International Focusing Optics Collaboration for uCrab Sensitivity (InFOCus).
“I have spent many years attempting to understand the elusive source of positrons in the central region of our galaxy,” says Jack. Most of his research has been conducted using balloon-borne instruments designed and built by small teams of scientists and engineers. He is especially interested in the hard X-ray emission from the inner edge of black hole accretion disks in galactic and extragalactic sources.
In summer of 2007, Jack was part of a team of international astronomers using NASA’s Swift satellite and the Japanese/U.S. Suzaku X-ray observatory that discovered a new class of active galactic nuclei (AGN). This new type of galaxy previously escaped notice because the nuclei are so heavily shrouded in gas and dust that almost no light gets out. Two of the AGNs targeted by Jack’s team can be found in galaxies ESP 005-G004 and ESO 297-G018, which are about 80 million and 350 million light-years from Earth, respectively.
Major: Math and Physics
Hot Air: Jack was a NASA Balloon Project scientist for more than seven years.
Graduate School: Ph.D. (Physics), Washington University
Featured Alumnus: Jack was featured in the winter 2008 issue of Puget Sound's award-winning alumni magazine, Arches.
Photo by Bill Hrybyk, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center | 
