Bios
Dr. Jonathan P. Gardner
Spitzer Space Telescope Program Scientist
NASA Headquarters
Dr. Jonathan Gardner is on temporary assignment as the Spitzer Space Telescope program scientist at NASA Headquarters. Gardner is also the deputy senior project scientist for NASA's James Webb Space Telescope. He began studying astronomy at Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., while spending his summers as a laboratory assistant at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. After graduating from Harvard, he moved to Honolulu to earn a masters degree and doctorate from the University of Hawaii. During his 6 years in Hawaii, he spent more than 100 nights on the frigid summit of Mauna Kea Observatory, studying cosmology and the evolution of galaxies using infrared detectors that were being tested for use on NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. In 1992, Dr. Gardner won a NATO fellowship to pursue his research at the University of Durham in England. In 1996, he returned to Goddard just before astronauts installed the infrared detectors on Hubble. In addition to conducting research with Hubble, Gardner also helps with the plans for its successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled for launch in 2011. The new telescope is designed to study galaxy formation and evolution in infrared, reaching backwards in time to detect and identify the first light from stars and galaxies in the early history of the universe.
