John Baker: NASA → France
Gravitational wave astrophysicist John Baker is leaving NASA Goddard Space Flight Center for France's CNRS in Toulouse. He built his career around simulations of black hole mergers, and that work has been central to the science case for LISA, the European Space Agency's space-based gravitational wave detector currently aimed for a 2035 launch. Baker cited both the appeal of continuing LISA work from the European side and, unusually on the record, political and social conditions in the US and concerns about his family's safety as reasons for the move.
- Baker won Goddard's highest space science honor, the John C. Lindsay Memorial Award, in 2008.
- His academic path ran from Truman State for undergrad to a Penn State PhD in gravitational physics, followed by a postdoc at the Albert Einstein Institute in Potsdam before joining Goddard in 2001.
- The hosts note that scientists rarely make public statements about policy or funding conditions because those institutions control their research money, making Baker's on-the-record comments about US political and social conditions particularly unusual.
Transcript
This chapter, from the episode video's captions · 392 words
1:37:32who's put that on the record. Singapore has handed her the keys to her old club plus a seuite seat and she took the loan. We are going to move here through to our second to last in our coverage of the summer science transfer window. If you want us to cover more, let us know. We can go country by country. John Baker is our gravitational wave astrophysicist. Uh NASA Goddard uh space flight center. He is moving to French National Center of Scientific Research in Tulus. Uh this happened actually late last year. Also on the free winner of the Goddard's highest space science
1:38:13honor, the John C. Lindsay Memorial Award in 2008, Kansas City uh uh uh sort of upbringing Truman State undergrad Penn State PhD in gravitational physics and then a posttock at the Albert Einstein Institute in Pott joined Gddard in 2001 and never left. He's been a member of the gravitational astrophysics lab. His big thing was simulations of black hole mergers. Uh we just talked a little bit about uh some of the work we have around imaging black holes going from still to quote unquote motion. Um this work that he's done has been a driver for the science case for LISA
1:38:55which is Europe's space-based detector. Another not midtable signing a key member here. So, as he moves to uh CNS uh CNRS, it's going to be the same miss mission just on the other side of the zoom. He'll be still working in this Lisa arena. The launch for that is still aimed for 2035. Uh and unlike Yagi who was not clear about whe um Baker also mentioned political and social conditions in the US and his family safety. Uh he put that on the record as well. You're sensing a trend here around, you know, scientists are normally relatively diplomatic,
1:39:35especially relate to policy because that's who puts food on their table in terms of money and funding. [sighs and gasps] >> Wow. This one's Yeah. I mean, uh, he I can't believe he he straight up said that. This is quite rare for scientists to like just like to say it. Yeah. I I don't know what to tell you. I don't know what to tell you. We're going to touch one more uh which is not just a
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