Chris Impey

Chris Impey is a University Distinguished Professor of Astronomy at the University of Arizona. For 17 years, he was Deputy Head of the Astronomy Department at the university. He has over 220 refereed publications and 80 conference proceedings in astronomy and 100 publications on educational topics. His work has been supported by $20 million in grants from NASA and the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Impey aims to convey the excitement of astronomy in as many ways as possible to a large public audience. His Teach Astronomy website has had 3 million unique visitors. He delivers 30 public talks a year, to audiences as large as 5,000 and as varied as NASA engineers, first graders, and judges of the Ninth Circuit Court. For a decade, he has traveled to India to teach Buddhist monks in a program started by the Dalai Lama. Additionally, Impey designed and led tours for donors and alumni to Italy, Chile, Britain, and South Africa, and he has been the astronomy enrichment lecturer for four cruise lines.

As a professor, Impey has won 11 teaching awards and has taught four online classes with over 370,000 enrolled and 6 million minutes of video lectures viewed. He has written popular articles on cosmology, astrobiology and education, two textbooks, a novel called "Shadow World," and nine popular science books: "The Living Cosmos," "How It Ends," "Talking About Life," "How It Began," "Dreams of Other Worlds," "Humble Before the Void," "Beyond: The Future of Space Travel," "Einstein’s Monsters: The Life and Times of Black Holes," and "Worlds Without End."

Impey is a past Vice President of the American Astronomical Society, and has won its career Education Prize. He has also been an NSF Distinguished Teaching Scholar, a Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar, Carnegie Council’s Arizona Professor of the Year, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor.