Marker Lectures in Astronomy and Astrophysics and Physics set for March 25, 26
Maura McLaughlin, Eberly Distinguished Professor of Physics and Astronomy at West Virginia University, will present the 2025 Russell E. Marker Lectures in Astronomy and Astrophysics and Physics on March 25 and 26 on the Penn State University Park campus. These free public lectures are sponsored by the Penn State Eberly College of Science.
The series includes a lecture intended for a general audience, titled “Detecting Monster Black Holes with a Galaxy-Size Observatory,” at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, March 25, in Freeman Auditorium, HUB-Robeson Center, as well as more-specialized lectures: “Pulsar Timing Arrays: A New Window on the Gravitational Wave Universe” at noon on Tuesday, March 25, and “The Discovery and Significance of Fast Radio Bursts” at 3:45 p.m. on Wednesday, March 26, both in 538 Davey Laboratory.
“Detecting Monster Black Holes with a Galaxy-Size Observatory"
Pulsars are neutron stars formed in the supernova explosions of massive, evolved stars. These exotic objects weigh more than the sun and can spin over 700 times per second. They possess extremely high magnetic fields, over a trillion times stronger than the Earth's. These properties make them energetic sources of radio waves, which are beamed along their magnetic axes. Astronomers detect a pulse of radio emission during each pulsar rotation, similar to a rotating lighthouse beam. These pulses can be timed with remarkable precision using large radio telescopes, allowing astronomers to detect tiny perturbations in their expected arrival times. Astronomers observe a network of these “cosmic clocks” distributed throughout the galaxy to search for invisible ripples in spacetime known as gravitational waves. In this talk, McLaughlin will describe how astronomers have used a network of these cosmic clocks to construct a galaxy-sized observatory, enabling the detection of gravitational waves from the most-massive black holes in the universe.
About the speaker
Maura McLaughlin is an eminent astrophysicist and Eberly Distinguished Professor of Physics and Astronomy at West Virginia University, renowned for her contributions to pulsar research and gravitational-wave astronomy. An alumna of the Penn State Eberly College of Science and a Schreyer Scholar in the Schreyer Honors College, she earned a bachelor of science degree in astronomy and astrophysics in 1994. She earned her doctoral degree in astronomy and space sciences from Cornell University, where her work laid the foundation for her career in radio astronomy and pulsar studies.
McLaughlin is an expert in pulsars — rapidly rotating neutron stars — and uses them as tools to study fundamental physics, including tests of general relativity and the detection of low-frequency gravitational waves. Through her pulsar work, she co-founded the Pulsar Search Collaboratory, which now provides valuable research opportunities for many students. In addition, she is a co-discoverer of fast radio bursts — extreme bursts of radio emission that are extremely energetic but only present for thousandths of a second. This discovery led to her being awarded the Shaw Prize in 2023. Furthermore, she is the chair of the NANOGrav collaboration, which recently announced the detection of a gravitational-wave background. This groundbreaking discovery earned McLaughlin and the NANOGrav collaboration the 2025 Bruno Rossi Prize from the High Energy Astrophysics Division of the American Astronomical Society.
In addition to the aforementioned accolades, McLaughlin’s achievements include numerous awards and recognitions. She was named a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2024 and a fellow of the American Physical Society in 2021. She was awarded the 2009 Research Corporation Cottrell Scholar Award and was named an Alfred P. Sloan fellow in 2008. She currently serves as the principal investigator of a National Science Foundation Partnership for International Research and Education award for work on the International Pulsar Timing Array and is the chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy and West Virginia University.
About the Marker Lectures
The Marker Lectures were established in 1984 through a gift from the late Russell Earl Marker, professor emeritus of organic chemistry at Penn State, whose pioneering synthetic methods revolutionized the steroid hormone industry and opened the door to the current era of hormone therapies, including the birth control pill.
The Marker endowment allows the Penn State Eberly College of Science to present annual Marker Lectures in astronomy and astrophysics, the chemical sciences, evolutionary biology, genetic engineering, the mathematical sciences, and the physical sciences.