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National Museum of Nuclear Science & History

Peter Vandervoort

PhysicistChicago, IL

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Peter Vandervoort Listen to Peter Vandervoort’s Oral History on Voices of the Manhattan Project

Peter Vandervoort is an American astrophysicist and professor emeritus in the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Chicago.

Vandervoort received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1960. Nobel Prize-winning astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar was his mentor. During his career at UChicago, Vandervoort studied or worked with numerous Manhattan Project veterans on the physics faculty, including Samuel Allison, Robert Mulliken, and Maria Goeppert-Mayer.

His current research focuses on stellar dynamics. He is also a member of the Board of Trustees of the Adler Planetarium.

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