physics

Ma Chung-pei

Ma Chung-pei is a physics 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 Ma Chung-pei rather than just read about it. In short: Ma Chung-Pei (Chinese: 馬中珮; pinyin: Mǎ Zhōngpèi) is a Taiwanese-American astrophysicist and cosmologist. She is the Judy Chandler Webb Professor of Astronomy and Physics at the University of California, Berkeley.

Key takeaways

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

Reference excerpt

Ma Chung-Pei (Chinese: 馬中珮; pinyin: Mǎ Zhōngpèi) is a Taiwanese-American astrophysicist and cosmologist. She is the Judy Chandler Webb Professor of Astronomy and Physics at the University of California, Berkeley. She led the teams that discovered several of largest known black holes from 2011 to 2016.

Biography Ma was born in Taiwan to parents Huang Chao-heng and Ma Chi-shen. She started playing violin at the age of four. She attended Taipei Municipal First Girls' Senior High School and won the Taiwan National Violin Competition in 1983. She then attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), receiving her Bachelor of Science degree in physics in 1987. She then earned a Ph.D. in physics from MIT in 1993. She studied theoretical cosmology and particle physics with Alan Guth and Edmund W. Bertschinger, her doctoral advisors. A violin prodigy as a teenager in Taiwan, winning a national violin competition in Taipei when she was 16, she also took violin classes during her college years at MIT at Boston's New England Conservatory of Music. From 1993 to 1996 Ma had a postdoctoral fellowship at the California Institute of Technology. From 1996 to 2001 she was an assistant and associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania. While there she won the Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching. She became a professor of astronomy at UC Berkeley's Department of Astronomy in 2001. Ma's research interests are the large-scale structure of the universe, dark matter, and the cosmic microwave background. She led the team that discovered the largest known black holes in 2011. Ma was the scientific editor in cosmology for The Astrophysical Journal.

Awards and honors 1987 – Phi Beta Kappa Society 1997 – Annie Jump Cannon Award in Astronomy (American Astronomical Society) 1999 – Sloan Research Fellowship 2003 – Maria Goeppert-Mayer Award (American Physical Society) 2009 – American Physical Society Fellow 2012 – American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellow 2012 – Simons Foundation Fellow 2020 – American Academy of Arts and Sciences Member 2022 - American Astronomical Society Fellow 2022 - National Academy of Sciences Member 2024 - Academician, Academia Sinica

Selected publications Ma, Chung-Pei; Bertschinger, Edmund (December 1995). "Cosmological Perturbation Theory in the Synchronous and Conformal Newtonian Gauges". The Astrophysical Journal. 455: 7–25. arXiv:astro-ph/9506072. Bibcode:1995ApJ...455....7M. doi:10.1086/176550. S2CID 14570491. Ma, Chung-Pei; Fry, J. N. (10 November 2000). "Deriving the Nonlinear Cosmological Power Spectrum and Bispectrum from Analytic Dark Matter Halo Profiles and Mass Functions". The Astrophysical Journal. 543 (2): 503–513. arXiv:astro-ph/0003343. Bibcode:2000ApJ...543..503M. doi:10.1086/317146. S2CID 295034. Boylan-Kolchin, M.; Ma, C.-P.; Quataert, E. (1 January 2008). "Dynamical friction and galaxy merging time-scales". Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 383 (1): 93–101. arXiv:0707.2960. Bibcode:2008MNRAS.383...93B. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2966.2007.12530.x. S2CID 12502384. McConnell, Nicholas J.; Ma, Chung-Pei (20 February 2013). "Revisiting the Scaling Relations of Black Hole Masses and Host Galaxy Properties". The Astrophysical Journal. 764 (2): 184. arXiv:1211.2816. Bibcode:2013ApJ...764..184M. doi:10.1088/0004-637X/764/2/184. S2CID 118411403. Ma, Chung-Pei; Caldwell, R. R.; Bode, Paul; Wang, Limin (10 August 1999). "The Mass Power Spectrum in Quintessence Cosmological Models". The Astrophysical Journal. 521 (1): L1–L4. arXiv:astro-ph/9906174. Bibcode:1999ApJ...521L...1M. doi:10.1086/312183. S2CID 16817444. Fakhouri, Onsi; Ma, Chung-Pei; Boylan-Kolchin, Michael (21 August 2010). "The merger rates and mass assembly histories of dark matter haloes in the two Millennium simulations". Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 406 (4): 2267–2278. arXiv:1001.2304. Bibcode:2010MNRAS.406.2267F. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2966.2010.16859.x. S2CID 118485197.

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Ma Chung-pei

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Ma Chung-pei claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In physics, 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 Ma Chung-pei 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 Ma Chung-pei 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 Ma Chung-pei

In research: Ma Chung-pei appears in physics 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 Ma Chung-pei 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: Ma Chung-pei is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1966 births, 21st-century American scientists, 21st-century Taiwanese scientists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Ma Chung-pei 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 Ma Chung-pei in 20 minutes

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

Frequently asked questions

What is Ma Chung-pei in simple terms?

Why does Ma Chung-pei matter?

Because it connects several physics 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 Ma Chung-pei?

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 Ma Chung-pei.