Carl Grillmair

Carl Johann Grillmair (1959 – 16 February 2026) was a Canadian astronomer and astrophysicist. He was a research scientist at the California Institute of Technology beginning in 1997, where he studied exoplanets, galactic structure, and dark matter. He collaborated on prominent NASA telescope missions including the Hubble Space Telescope, Spitzer Space Telescope, and Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, and led the team that discovered water in the atmosphere of the hot Jupiter exoplanet HD 189733 b.

On 16 February 2026, Grillmair was fatally shot outside his home in Llano, an unincorporated community in Antelope Valley, California.

Early life and education Grillmair was born in Calgary in 1959 to Leo and Elfi Grillmair. He had two younger siblings, including Walter Grillmair, who died in 1981. He was interested in astronomy since childhood. His father, Leo Grillmair, was a rock climber who, with Hans Gmoser and Isabel Spreat, made the first technical rock climb on Mount Yamnuska in 1952.

Grillmair earned a Bachelor of Science with honours in astrophysics from the University of Calgary in 1983, where he attended on a Cecil M. Brownlee bursary. He was awarded the Province of Alberta Award and the BP Canada Scholarship, and graduated with a Top Student in Physics prize.

Career As a graduate student, Grillmair worked as a data analyst at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, and on the International Ultraviolet Explorer at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. He also studied stellar populations in the Local Group. Around the same time, along with principal investigators Douglas Richstone and Sandra Faber, he was a co-investigator on the NUKER collaboration, which used Hubble data to study the cores of nearby galaxies, until 2001.

He joined Caltech's Spitzer Science Center in 1997. He worked on the Spitzer Space Telescope, including on the Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) and briefly as a deputy lead on the Infrared Spectrograph (IRS) instrument. Beginning in 2010, he was also a calibration scientist on NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE).

Personal life Grillmair was married to Louise Grillmair. He was an avid pilot, flying gliders and sailplanes, and enjoyed repairing his home, where he kept a small observatory with multiple telescopes. Paramedics pronounced him dead at the scene. The Los Angeles County Medical Examiner reported that Grillmair died from a single gunshot wound, and prosecutors' charging documents state he was shot once in the neck.

Officers from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department in Palmdale responded to a call about a carjacking in the area and arrested a suspect, identified as 29-year-old Freddy Snyder, who had allegedly carjacked his mother after firing a rifle shot into the ceiling of her home. Snyder lived two miles from Grillmair's residence and was reported as having a history of trespassing on Grillmair's property. Grillmair had reported him to police on 20 December 2025.

Grillmair's widow, Louise Grillmair, rejected the conspiracy theory and told the press that she believed her husband was targeted in a misguided revenge plot. In the months before the killing, a man had trespassed on their property claiming to be hunting coyotes and causing disturbances at nearby homes. Although Grillmair had not called 911 to report the man, Louise believes the suspect blamed her husband for the police contact. Snyder returned with a baseball bat two weeks before the shooting, and then allegedly returned on 16 February and killed Grillmair.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors honored Grillmair on 3 March 2026.

Awards NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal (2011) Maclean's – Thirty-Nine Canadians Who Make the World a Better Place to Live In: Discoverers and Thinkers (2006) California Institute of Technology – Gemini Fellowship (1997)