Lisa Kewley

Lisa Jennifer Kewley (born 1974) is an Australian astrophysicist and current Director of the Center for Astrophysics Harvard & Smithsonian. Previously, Kewley was Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for All Sky Astrophysics in 3-D (ASTRO 3-D) and ARC Laureate Fellow at the Australian National University College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, where she was also a professor. Specialising in galaxy evolution, she won the Annie Jump Cannon Award in Astronomy in 2005 for her studies of oxygen in galaxies, and the Newton Lacy Pierce Prize in Astronomy in 2008. In 2014 she was elected a fellow of the Australian Academy of Science. In 2020 she received the James Craig Watson Medal. In 2021 she was elected as an international member of the National Academy of Sciences. In 2022 she became the first female director of the Center for Astrophysics Harvard & Smithsonian.

Life Kewley was raised in South Australia. Her parents encouraged engagement with the sciences and she was influenced by a high school physics teacher, and participation at a school stargazing camp, to become interested in astronomy. After school, she enrolled in a Bachelor of Science at the University of Adelaide, graduating with a BSc (Hons) in astrophysics. She then moved to Canberra to pursue a doctorate in astrophysics at the Australian National University, which was awarded in 2002. In 2001, she spent some time in the United States as a visiting scholar at Johns Hopkins University. which as of 2016 was her most-cited publication.

After completing her doctorate, Kewley moved to the Center for Astrophysics Harvard & Smithsonian in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on a CfA fellowship, working on the formation and evolution of stars. She then worked with the W. M. Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea, analysing data on the oxygen content of this and other galaxies of different ages, contributing to the understanding of their evolution. For this research, in 2005 she received the Annie Jump Cannon Award in Astronomy. The award was for her research "that has shown how the properties of a galaxy depend on how long ago it was formed". Her work studied the variation in properties of old and new galaxies, including oxygen richness, star formation rate, and the characteristics of the galaxy's nucleus.

In 2014, Kewley was elected Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science. She was chosen to deliver the 2018 Harley Wood lecture, an annual event of the Astronomical Society of Australia, on the topic of oxygen and stars. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of New South Wales in 2020.

Kewley developed the proposal for, and is director of, the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in All Sky Astrophysics, based at Mount Stromlo.

She married her husband Reuben in Canberra in 2001, shortly before they moved to Massachusetts. They have two sons, one born in 2008 and the other in 2011, both born when she was living and working in Hawai'i.