Born in Shreveport, Louisiana, John N. Bahcall attended the University of California at Berkeley, where he received his B.A. in physics in 1956. In 1957, he earned a M.S. from the University of Chicago, followed by a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1961. Following time spent at Indiana University as a research associate, Dr. Bahcall moved to the California Institute of Technology, where he became an associate professor of theoretical physics.
In 1968, Dr. Bahcall became a member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. By 1971, he was appointed professor of natural sciences at the Institute. In 1997, the Institute honored Dr. Bahcall by appointing him Richard Black Professor of Natural Sciences, a position he still holds.
From 1973 to 1992, Dr. Bahcall was part of NASA's Hubble Telescope Working Group. He led a team of astronomers that ruled out the possibility that red dwarf stars constitute invisible matter, called dark matter, believed to account for more than ninety percent of the mass of the universe. Additionally, in 1995, NASA's Hubble Telescope helped solve a twenty-year-old cosmic mystery by showing that mysterious clouds of hydrogen in space may actually be vast halos of gas surrounding galaxies. Twenty years ahead of their time, Bahcall and his colleague, Lyman Spitzer, first proposed the possibility of galaxy halos in 1969.
Throughout his career, Dr. Bahcall's achievements have been widely recognized. In addition to receiving the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal and the National Medal of Science, he was awarded the 1970 Warner Prize of the American Astronomical Society for his research on quasars and solar neutrinos, the 1994 Heineman Prize by the American Astronomical Society and the American Institute of Physics for his work on solar neutrinos, and the 1998 Hans Bethe Prize from the American Physical Society "for his fundamental work on all theoretical aspects of the solar neutrino problem and his important contributions to other areas of astrophysics."
In 1999 Dr. Bahcall received the American Astronomical Society's highest recognition, the Henry Norris Russell Lectureship, which is awarded on the basis of a lifetime of eminence in astronomical research. The award citation reads: "John N. Bahcall has worked tirelessly to advance the detection of solar neutrinos. His other notable contributions include developing the standard methods used to identify absorption line systems in QSO spectra, and putting together a comprehensive model of our Galaxy." Dr. Bahcall was president of the American Astronomical Society and chair of the National Academy Decade Survey Committee for Astronomy and Astrophysics.
Dr. Bahcall's body of research and written work is tremendous, including seven books, 419 scientific papers, and forty-two popular articles. His work is noted both for its scientific rigor and for his determination to explain its scientific content to non-scientists.
Dr. Bahcall has ties to the University of Pennsylvania, having served as a member of the External Review Committee of the Department of Physics. He has served as an informal consultant to the department, working closely with Professors Ray Davis, Kenneth Lande, Gene Beier, and Paul Langacker.