Celebrating the career of David Rabinowitz

Wright Lab senior research scientist David Rabinowitz ‘83 BS has retired as of November 1. Colleagues and friends gathered to celebrate his career and wish him well on the next stage of his journey at Wright Lab on October 29. 

Rabinowitz has had decades of experience playing a leading role in the instrumentation, operation, and analysis of astronomical surveys to discover and characterize solar system bodies, supernovae, galaxies, and extragalactic transients.  

He is credited with the co-discovery of thousands of asteroids, the dwarf planets in the Kuiper Belt, hundreds of supernovae, and other galactic transients. The followup of these discoveries has led to a large volume of publications characterizing supernova properties and improving type Ia supernova as cosmological standard candles. The discovery of the dwarf planets and other solar system bodies has been fundamental in the studies of the solar system formation and its evolution. 

Surveys to which Rabinowitz has contributed include the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Survey (DESI); the Mayall z-band Legacy Survey; Near-Earth Asteroid Tracking (NEAT); Spacewatch; and the surveys using the QUEST camera: Palomar, La Silla-QUEST, and La Silla Schmidt Southern Survey (LS4). 

Rabinowitz’s significant hardware and software contributions include the Yale Fiberview Camera for DESI, the MOSAIC-3 array for the Mayall survey, the QUEST camera, and near-earth asteroid tracking cameras for NEAT. 

There is even an asteroid named for Rabinowitz, in honor of his work in the Spacewatch program. The asteroid was discovered in 1972 by Dutch-American astronomer Tom Gehrels at Palomar Observatory, and is now called 5040 Rabinowitz. 

Rabinowitz’s comprehensive survey of our solar system, together with his colleagues Michael Brown and Chadwick A. Trujillo, also had an unintended consequence. The survey’s detection of a population of dwarf planets in our own solar system contributed to the highly visible demotion of Pluto as a planet. 

In an article from the November/December 2006 Yale Alumni magazine, Rabinowitz wrote, “Personally, I would have made an exception for Pluto. Many scientists have made a career studying the ex-planet. Ever since its discovery in 1930 by Clyde Tombaugh, it has been an enigmatic outsider whose frozen surface reveals the composition of the primeval solar system. Pluto easily outshines all other known objects beyond Neptune, owing to its currently closer proximity. It is the well-deserved destination of the New Horizons spacecraft, now on route to an encounter in 2015. It is easy to see why hundreds of planetary astronomers (including me) have signed a petition rejecting the new IAU definition. What Pluto lacks in size, it makes up for in significance. It remains the jewel of the Kuiper Belt.” 

Rabinowitz has also done outreach in a variety of public forums, including  television, radio, newspaper, museums, high schools, and by invitation at colleges and universities. He has frequently hosted and mentored area high school students interested in science careers. 

Rabinowitz first came to Yale as an undergraduate, graduating in 1983 with a B.S. in Physics.  He received his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Chicago in 1988. 

After postdoctoral and research scientist positions at the University of Arizona, Lunar and Planetary Laboratory; Carnegie Institution in Washington D.C., Department of Terrestrial Magnetism; and California Institute of Technology Jet Propulsion Lab, Rabinowitz returned to the Yale Department of Physics as a research scientist in 1999. He was promoted to senior research scientist in 2012. 

Charles Baltay, Eugene Higgins Professor Emeritus of Physics, long-time collaborator of Rabinowitz, and a member of Yale’s Wright Lab, remarked, “I have worked very closely over the last twenty-five years with David. They were not only very productive, but also very enjoyable years.”