1 - Mapmaker, mapmaker make me a map

Summary

John Huchra is one of the most naturally gifted extragalactic observers working today. He was educated in physics at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and earned his PhD from Caltech (California Institute of Technology), but has spent most of his professional career at Harvard-Smithsonian. John's interests span cosmology, galaxy cluster dynamics, the large structure in the Universe, and star formation across the Universe. John is an avid outdoorsman, enjoying hiking, canoeing, and skiing. He and his wife Rebecca Henderson live in Lexington, Massachusetts, with their young son, Harry. John's specialty is doing large-scale projects in a field more often dominated by one- and two-person teams, something he tells us about here.

I love being on mountaintops. It's the next best thing to being in space. I guess I also love counting things, whether the things are 4,000 footers in New England, cards in games of chance, or galaxies on my observing list. Therein, of course, lies the tale.

It all started because I was a little kid much more interested in reading than in sports. I grew up in a moderately rough, poor neighborhood in northern New Jersey just outside New York City. I was lucky that both my parents were quite intelligent and always stressed the value of hard work and knowledge. That got me into reading, and science and science fiction were at the top of my list.