What do we know about the Big Bang?

That is literally the title of this year’s Jansky Lecture to be held on 26 October at 7 p.m.

The NRAO awarded the 2026 Karl G. Jansky Lectureship to Professor John E. Carlstrom, Chair and Chandrasekhar Distinguished Service Professor, Departments of Astronomy and Astrophysics and Physics at the University of Chicago. The Jansky Lectureship is an honor established by the trustees of AUI to recognize and celebrate outstanding contributions to the advancement of radio astronomy.

Professor Carlstrom earned his A.B. in Physics from Vassar College in 1981 and Ph.D. from UC Berkeley in 1988. He was a Millikan Research Fellow in astrophysics at the California Institute of Technology (1989-91) where he also taught (1991-1995). He joined the University of Chicago faculty in 1995.

Named in honor of the man who, in 1932, first detected radio waves from a cosmic source, the Karl G. Jansky Lectureship is an honor established by the trustees of Associated Universities, Inc., to recognize outstanding contributions to the advancement of radio astronomy. First awarded in 1966, it is Karl Jansky’s discovery of radio waves from the central region of our Milky Way Galaxy started the science of radio astronomy.