About this Event

Carnegie is a very special place, and the environment of the Observatories reflects the values of an institution dedicated to enabling exceptional scientists to pursue their ideas with complete freedom. Observatories Staff Members and fellows have no other responsibility than to do great science; neither teaching, nor the search for outside funding, nor any other institutional priority need distract them from their own intellectual goals. The institution supports these goals with generous resources. The small scientific staff of about a dozen Staff Members, and an equal number of postdoctoral fellows and associates, have access to time on the institution's four telescopes. The assurance of generous long-term support permits Observatories scientists to pursue long-term projects whose pace is dictated by the pace of discovery itself, rather than by the need to justify the next grant or the next allocation of telescope time. It is this exceptional environment that has enabled the relatively small Carnegie staff to make such disproportionately large contributions to astronomy.