Michael Turner

Michael S. Turner (born July 29, 1949) is an American theoretical cosmologist who coined the term dark energy in 1998. He is the Rauner Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Physics at the University of Chicago, having previously served as the Bruce V. & Diana M. Rauner Distinguished Service Professor, The 2003 National Academy study, Connecting quarks with the cosmos: eleven science questions for the new century, which Turner chaired, identified opportunities at the intersection of astronomy and physics and has helped shape science investment in the US in this area. In 2022, Turner was appointed as a co-leader, with Maria Spiropulu, of a National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine study, leading a committee of 17 physicists world-wide to consider the strategic vision of research in elementary particle physics.

Career Turner became an instructor in physics at Stanford University in 1978 and was a fellow at the Enrico Fermi Institute from 1978 to 1980. He was a visiting professor at the Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, from 1981 to 1982 and became a scientist at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Ill, in 1983. By 2020, Turner was the Rauner Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Physics at UChicago.

Research With Edward Kolb, Turner helped establish the interdisciplinary field of particle astrophysics, combining cosmology and elementary particle physics to understand the origin and evolution of the Universe. His research focuses on the earliest moments of creation, and he has made contributions to inflationary cosmology, particle dark matter and structure formation, the theory of big bang nucleosynthesis, and the nature of dark energy. His work in precision cosmology combines theoretical work with measurement to better understand and test theories and models using cosmological data.

Awards 1984, Helen B. Warner Prize of the American Astronomical Society 1986, Fellow of the American Physical Society, "For outstanding work at the interface of particle physics and cosmology which has led to a new understanding of the early Universe." 1996, Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences 1997, Julius Edgar Lilienfeld Prize of the American Physical Society 1997, Member, National Academy of Sciences 2005, Fellow in Physics, American Association for the Advancement of Science 2010, Dannie Heineman Prize for Astrophysics of the American Astronomical Society and the American Institute of Physics 2017, Member, American Philosophical Society 2020, Legacy Fellow of the American Astronomical Society