Riccardo Giacconi

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To physicists and astronomers, Riccardo Giacconi needs no introduction. A founding father of x-ray astronomy, he holds the 2002 Nobel Prize in Physics and has won numerous other awards in physics and astronomy, including the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (1982) and the National Medal of Science (2003). Giacconi was the first director of the Space Telescope Science Institute, served as director general of the European Southern Observatory from 1993 to 1999, and has been a professor of physics and astronomy at the Johns Hopkins University since 1999.