astronomy

Jeremiah P. Ostriker

Jeremiah P. Ostriker 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 Jeremiah P. Ostriker rather than just read about it. In short: Jeremiah Paul Ostriker ( oh-STRY-kər; April 13, 1937 – April 6, 2025) was an American astrophysicist and a professor of astronomy at Columbia University and a Charles A. Young Professor Emeritus at Princeton, where he also served as a senior research scholar.

Key takeaways

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

Reference excerpt

Jeremiah Paul Ostriker ( oh-STRY-kər; April 13, 1937 – April 6, 2025) was an American astrophysicist and a professor of astronomy at Columbia University and a Charles A. Young Professor Emeritus at Princeton, where he also served as a senior research scholar. Ostriker also served as a university administrator as Provost of Princeton University.

Early life and education Ostriker was born on the Upper West Side of Manhattan to Martin Ostriker, the proprietor of a clothing company, and Jeanne (Sumpf) Ostriker, a public school teacher. He had three siblings. Ostriker became interested in science at a young age, and he later recounted teaching himself difficult subjects, including calculus, writing: "I felt that I learned better on my own than through school". He received his B.A. from Harvard and his PhD from the University of Chicago.

Career and research After earning his Ph.D. at Chicago, he conducted post-doctoral work at the University of Cambridge. From 1971 to 1995, Ostriker was a professor at Princeton, and served as Provost there from 1995 to 2001. From 2001 to 2003, he was appointed Plumian Professor of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy at the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge. He then returned to Princeton as the Charles Young Professor of Astronomy and later served as the Charles A. Young Professor Emeritus. He became a professor of astronomy at Columbia in 2012. Ostriker was very influential in advancing the theory that most of the mass in the universe is not visible at all, but consists of dark matter. His research also focused on the interstellar medium, galaxy evolution, cosmology and black holes. On June 20, 2013 Ostriker was given the White House Champions of Change Award for his role in initiating the Sloan Digital Sky Survey project, which makes all of its astronomical data sets available publicly on the Internet. Ostriker was also known for the Ostriker–Peebles criterion, relating to the stability of galactic formation.

Personal life and death Ostriker married noted poet and essayist Alicia Ostriker (née Suskin) in 1958, and they had three children: Rebecca[1], Eve, and Gabriel. Like her father, Eve became an astrophysics professor at Princeton University, in 2012, the same year as her father's retirement. Jeremiah and Alicia Ostriker were residents of Princeton, New Jersey. Ostriker died of renal disease in Manhattan, on April 6, 2025, at the age of 87.

Publications As of April 2021, Ostriker's articles have been cited over 85,910 times and he has an h-index of 130 (130 papers with at least 130 citations) according to the NASA Astrophysics Data System including:

Awards and honors Ostriker won numerous awards and honors including:

References

External links Jeremiah P. Ostriker at IMDb www.astro.princeton.edu/people/webpages/jpo/

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Jeremiah P. Ostriker

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Jeremiah P. Ostriker 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 Jeremiah P. Ostriker 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 Jeremiah P. Ostriker 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 Jeremiah P. Ostriker

In research: Jeremiah P. Ostriker 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 Jeremiah P. Ostriker 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: Jeremiah P. Ostriker is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1937 births, 2025 deaths, American astronomers, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Jeremiah P. Ostriker 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 Jeremiah P. Ostriker in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Jeremiah P. Ostriker 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 Jeremiah P. Ostriker out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Jeremiah P. Ostriker in simple terms?

Why does Jeremiah P. Ostriker 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 Jeremiah P. Ostriker?

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 Jeremiah P. Ostriker.