Professor Penny Sackett, astronomer and physicist

Penny Sackett (b. 1956), former Chief Scientist for Australia, gained her undergraduate degree in her home state of Nebraska, USA, before earning a PhD in theoretical physics at the University of Pittsburgh in 1984. While working for the US National Science Foundation, the Kapteyn Astronomical Institute in the Netherlands, and the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, she developed a specialisation in gravitational microlensing to search for extrasolar planets, as well as interests in dark matter and galactic structure. In 2002 she was appointed director of the Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the Australian National University. In 2006 she was one of an international team of 73 astronomers who discovered the first known earth-sized planet orbiting a normal star other than the Sun in the inner Milky Way. Sackett was appointed the Chief Scientist for Australia in late 2008, but remained an adjunct professor at ANU and continued to supervise research students. She resigned as Chief Scientist in 2011, announcing that she intended to contribute to science in other ways (she describes herself as physicist by training, an astronomer by profession and an educator by inclination.) A dual citizen, Sackett is an Elected International Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society.