Adam Guy Riess
active c. 1969, Washington, D.C., USA
American astrophysicist whose analysis for the High-z team led to the accelerating-universe conclusion.
Riess was a graduate student/postdoc when he developed the light-curve calibration method (MLCS) for type Ia supernovae. In 1998 he led the High-z team's paper announcing accelerating expansion. He went on to measure the Hubble constant with increasing precision, uncovering the 'Hubble tension' between early- and late-universe determinations.
Nobel-winning work
The 1998 paper (Riess et al.) analyzed 16 distant and nearby type Ia supernovae: today's expansion rate exceeds what a decelerating history implies — expansion is accelerating. Together with Perlmutter's team result, it was the first evidence for dark energy — the component now dominating cosmic dynamics.
Workplaces: Johns Hopkins University, Space Telescope Science Institute
United States