Debra Fischer: All About Exoplanets

Debra Fischer, currently a professor at Yale University, is one of the world’s leading experts on extrasolar planets. She and her colleagues have discovered hundreds of them by measuring Doppler shifts and the spectra of their stars, including the first known multiple-planet system that was found in 1999.

In this hourlong interview with Editor David J. Eicher, Fischer shares what first got her interested in astrophysics and what it was like to finish her Ph.D. at the dawn of exoplanet research, allowing her to get in at the ground floor. She goes on to talk about the ubiquity of planets the past 2.5 decades of research has revealed [11:20] and the future studies that will focus on looking for life elsewhere in the universe [14:00]. After touching a bit on funding issues [21:30], Fischer delves into the various missions — past, present, and future — critical to exoplanet research [24:45], before spending some time explaining the various exoplanet detection methods [42:30] and concluding with some of her favorite planetary systems [48:00].