Regular biography
Alar Toomre is a Professor Emeritus of Applied Mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He received S.B. degrees in aeronautics and physics from MIT in 1957 and completed his Ph.D. at the University of Manchester under a Marshall Scholarship in 1960. He joined the MIT mathematics faculty in 1963 and was promoted to associate professor in 1965 and professor in 1970. His research interests include astrophysics, stellar dynamics, and fluid mechanics. He has served on numerous administrative committees at MIT and elsewhere, including roles as Chair of the Committee for Academic Performance and Chair of the Search Committee for Director of the Harvard/Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. He was a Guggenheim fellow, Fairchild fellow, and MacArthur fellow, and received the Brouwer Award in 1994 and the Magellanic Premium Medal in 2014. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and a Member of the National Academy of Sciences.