Stephen E Thorsett

Stephen E. Thorsett became the 25th president of Willamette University on July 1, 2011. He is an internationally recognized astrophysicist who brings to Willamette more than two decades of experience as a scholar, teacher and academic leader. Immediately preceding his arrival at Willamette, Thorsett was a professor and former chair of the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He also served as the dean of its Division of Physical and Biological Sciences. Before moving to UC Santa Cruz, Thorsett worked as an assistant professor of physics at Princeton University and a research fellow at Caltech. He was an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow and received the Fullam Award of the Dudley Observatory. He also earned a number of fellowships and other honors while completing his master’s and doctorate in physics at Princeton and his bachelor’s in mathematics with honors at Carleton College, from which he graduated summa cum laude. Thorsett grew up in Salem. He is the son of Karen and Grant Thorsett, a long-time Willamette University biology professor. Thorsett attended Salem public schools, and graduated from South Salem High School. He is married to Rachel Dewey Thorsett, an astrophysicist and an affiliated scholar in physics at Willamette. Thorsett and his wife have one daughter, Laura who is a freshman at Harvard. 1991 Princeton University, PhD (Physics) 1989 Princeton University, MA (Physics) 1987 Carleton College, BA