“I’ve always liked to push the frontier and that’s not easy.” An Interview with Giovanni Fazio

Description

Giovanni Fazio is a senior physicist at the Center for Astrophysics Harvard-Smithsonian. In his decades-spanning career, he has been instrumental in several observational programs, from his work studying gamma rays using balloon-borne telescopes to his time as the Principal Investigator for the Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) on NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope — a forerunner of the James Webb Space Telescope. Recently, Giovanni sat down and walked us through his incredible scientific journey, where he recounts reading his first book on "smashing atoms" at the age of 13, his struggles as a young grad student adapting to MIT’s academic culture, and his leap from nuclear physics to gamma rays to his work in infrared astronomy.

Participants

• Giovanni Fazio
  
• Jason Rodriguez
  
• AGU Narratives
  

Interview By

• AGU Narratives