2025 Great Lecture: Adam Kraus - The Evolution of Planetary Systems Across Time and Space

The 2025 Great Lecture in Astronomy will be presented by Prof. Adam Kraus. Adam explores how planetary systems evolve throughout their lives, as well as how they differ based on the environment in which they formed.

Adam Kraus is a professor of astronomy at The University of Texas at Austin and is the author of over 200 refereed publications. Adam earned his Ph.D. in Astronomy from the California Institute of Technology and was awarded a NASA-Hubble Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Hawai'i and a Clay Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics before joining UT’s faculty in 2013.

Adam and his research group study the formation and evolution of planetary systems and their host stars across their full lifespans, from collapsing clouds of gas and dust to the oldest planetary systems, identifying the key forces that sculpt planetary systems to look like - or very unlike - our own. To carry out this research, he uses observations from a wide range of ground-based telescopes, most notably McDonald Observatory and Keck Observatory, as well as space telescopes such as James Webb, Gaia, Hubble, Kepler, and TESS.

The 2024 Great Lecture is presented by The University of Texas at Austin's Department of Astronomy and McDonald Observatory Board of Visitors.

This is a featured event in the 2025 Texas Science Festival. Department of Astronomy is a proud partner of the Festival, organized by The University of Texas at Austin’s College of Natural Sciences. View Festival details online: https://sciencefest.utexas.edu