Peter Shawhan

Peter Shawhan is an American physicist. He is currently professor of physics at the University of Maryland and was a co-recipient of the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, the Gruber Prize in Cosmology, and the Bruno Rossi Prize for his work on LIGO.

Peter Shawhan
Nationality	American
Alma mater	Washington University in St. Louis University of Chicago
Awards	Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics (2016) Gruber Prize in Cosmology (2016) Bruno Rossi Prize (2017) Princess of Asturias Award for Scientific and Technical Research (2017) Fellow, American Physical Society
Scientific career
Fields	Physics Gravitational waves
Institutions	Caltech University of Maryland, College Park
Doctoral advisor	Bruce Winstein

Biography

Shawhan received his bachelor's degree in physics in 1990 summa cum laude from Washington University in St. Louis, where he was an Arthur Holly Compton Fellow in the Physical Sciences and Mathematics. He was a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow at the University of Chicago, where he received his Ph.D. in 1999 under the supervision of Bruce Winstein.^[1] He was then a Millikan Prize Postdoctoral Fellow and a senior scientist at Caltech before becoming professor of physics at the University of Maryland, College Park.^[2]

He works on LIGO and is chair of the division of gravitational physics of the American Physical Society.^[3][4][5]

Awards

• Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics (2016)^[6][7]
• Gruber Prize in Cosmology (2016)
• Bruno Rossi Prize (2017)
• Princess of Asturias Award for Scientific and Technical Research^[5]
• Kirwan Faculty Research and Scholarship Prize, University of Maryland (2018)^[8]
• Fellow, American Physical Society (2019)^[9]