astronomy

Jacqueline Hewitt

Jacqueline Hewitt is a astronomy topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Jacqueline Hewitt rather than just read about it. In short: Jacqueline Nina Hewitt (born September 4, 1958) is an American astrophysicist. She was the first person to discover an Einstein ring.

Key takeaways

Jacqueline Hewitt belongs to astronomy; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Jacqueline Hewitt to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Jacqueline Hewitt from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Jacqueline Nina Hewitt (born September 4, 1958) is an American astrophysicist. She was the first person to discover an Einstein ring. She is a Fellow of the American Astronomical Society.

Early life and education Hewitt was born in Washington, D.C., on September 4, 1958, to parents Warren E. Hewitt, a retired international lawyer from the State Department, and Gertrud (Graedel) Hewitt. She attended Bryn Mawr College where she graduated magna cum laude with a degree in economics in 1980. Hewitt took an astronomy class at Haverford College her sophomore year, which sparked her interest in science. She attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for graduate school. During her graduate studies, she began studying gravitational lensing using the Very Large Array radio telescope. Hewitt obtained a Ph.D. in physics in 1986. Some sources erroneously state that she received her Ph.D. in 1988.

Career Hewitt was appointed with a postdoctoral fellowship at MIT as part of the Very-long-baseline interferometry unit from 1986 to 1988. While analyzing the data from her graduate studies, she found a ring on her computer screen. This ring, part of the gravitational lens system MG1131+0456, ended up being the very first Einstein ring discovered. Since Hewitt's groundbreaking discovery, many other Einstein rings have been discovered, and were found to be far more common than astronomers thought. Einstein rings are important because they can help answer questions about the size and the fate of our universe. Hewitt worked as a researcher at Princeton University's Department of Astrophysical Sciences in 1988. After one year of researching at Princeton, she returned to MIT as an assistant physics professor, working as a full-time professor since 1989. Hewitt is also the principal investigator for the Radio Astronomy Group of the Research Laboratory of Electronics at MIT. In 2002, Hewitt was appointed Director of the MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research until 2019.

Honors In 1990, Hewitt won the David and Lucile Packard Foundation fellowship. In 1993, Hewitt was awarded the Henry G. Booker Prize by the International Union of Radio Science. For her work on gravitational lenses, her colleagues at MIT nominated her for the 1995–1996 Harold E. Edgerton Award. In 1995, Hewitt was the recipient of the Maria Goeppert-Mayer Award and in 1989 the Annie J. Cannon Award in Astronomy for her work in radio astronomy. In 2005 she was named a Fellow of the American Physics Society. She was elected a Legacy Fellow of the American Astronomical Society in 2020.

Personal life Hewitt has two children: Keith Hewitt Redwine, born in 1988, and Jonathan Hewitt Redwine, born in 1993.

References

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Jacqueline Hewitt

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Jacqueline Hewitt claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Jacqueline Hewitt before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Jacqueline Hewitt ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Jacqueline Hewitt

In research: Jacqueline Hewitt appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Jacqueline Hewitt in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Jacqueline Hewitt is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1958 births, 21st-century American women, American astrophysicists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Jacqueline Hewitt outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Jacqueline Hewitt in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Jacqueline Hewitt means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Jacqueline Hewitt out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Jacqueline Hewitt in simple terms?

Jacqueline Nina Hewitt (born September 4, 1958) is an American astrophysicist. She was the first person to discover an Einstein ring.

Why does Jacqueline Hewitt matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Jacqueline Hewitt?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Jacqueline Hewitt.