Jane Luu

Verified Timeline

Lore & Background

Her family lived in refugee camps and motels before settling in Kentucky, where she had relatives. After graduating as high school valedictorian, she earned a scholarship to Stanford University and received a bachelor’s degree in physics in 1984. A stint at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory inspired her to pursue astronomy. As a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she studied links between asteroids and comets for her PhD. With David C. Jewitt, she spent five years observing with the University of Hawaiʻi’s 2.2-meter telescope on Mauna Kea, and in 1992 they discovered the first known Kuiper Belt object beyond Pluto and Charon—15760 Albion, nicknamed “Smiley.” This work revealed a previously empty-seeming region of the solar system. She received the Annie J. Cannon Award in Astronomy in 1991, a Hubble Fellowship in 1992, and her PhD from MIT in 1992. She later became an assistant professor at Harvard University and a professor at Leiden University in the Netherlands. In 2004, she and Jewitt reported crystalline water ice and ammonia hydrate on Quaoar, then the largest known Kuiper Belt object, suggesting the ice formed underground and was exposed by a collision. Since 2001, she has worked at MIT Lincoln Laboratory on lidar-based sensing systems for defense. She won the 2012 Shaw Prize and the 2012 Kavli Prize in Astrophysics for discovering and characterizing the Kuiper Belt. The asteroid 5430 Luu is named in her honor. She enjoys travel, outdoor activities, and playing the cello.

Reader's Guide

This work provided key evidence for the solar system's formation and evolution, and linked short-period comets to this reservoir. Her honors include the Annie J. Cannon Award in Astronomy, the Shaw Prize in Astronomy, and the Kavli Prize in Astrophysics, the latter shared with David C. Jewitt and Michael E. Brown for discovering and characterizing the Kuiper Belt and its largest members. Luu co-discovered the first Kuiper Belt object beyond Pluto and Charon, 15760 Albion, after five years of observation with Jewitt using a telescope on Mauna Kea. She later reported, with Jewitt, the discovery of crystalline water ice and indications of ammonia hydrate on the Kuiper Belt object Quaoar, theorizing that the ice formed underground and was exposed by a collision. Her professional career includes assistant professor roles at Harvard University and a tenured position at Leiden University, followed by work as a senior scientist at MIT Lincoln Laboratory, where she focuses on lidar-based sensing systems for defense. She also holds a Hubble Fellowship and has the main-belt asteroid 5430 Luu named in her honor.

Did You Know?

• Jane Luu immigrated to the United States as a refugee in 1975 during the fall of Saigon.
• In 1992, Luu and David C. Jewitt discovered the first known Kuiper Belt object other than Pluto and Charon, using the University of Hawaiʻi's 2.2-meter telescope on Mauna Kea.
• In December 2004, Luu and Jewitt reported the discovery of crystalline water ice on Quaoar, then the largest known Kuiper Belt object.