Jonathan Lunine

Jonathan I. Lunine (born June 26, 1959) is an American planetary scientist and physicist. Lunine teaches at Cornell University, where he is the David C. Duncan Professor in the Physical Sciences and chair of the Department of Astronomy. Having published more than 380 research papers, Lunine is at the forefront of research into planet formation, evolution, and habitability. His work includes analysis of brown dwarfs, gas giants, and planetary satellites. Within the Solar System, bodies with potential organic chemistry and prebiotic conditions, particularly Saturn's moon Titan, have been the focus of Lunine's research.

Lunine is the David Baltimore Distinguished Visiting Scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He will assume the position of chief scientist of Jet Propulsion Laboratory on August 16, 2024. Lunine is an interdisciplinary scientist on the Cassini mission to Saturn, and on the James Webb Space Telescope, as well as co-investigator on the Juno mission launched in 2011 to Jupiter. He is the principal investigator of a proposed astrobiology mission to Enceladus called Enceladus Life Finder.

Lunine is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Geophysical Union, and a member of the International Academy of Astronautics, which gave him its Basic Science Award in 2009. In 2015 he was awarded the Jean Dominique Cassini medal of the European Geosciences Union. He earned a B.S. in physics and astronomy from the University of Rochester in 1980, followed by M.S. (1983) and Ph.D. (1985) degrees in lllPlanetary lllScience from the California Institute of Technology.

Lunine was raised Jewish, but is a convert to Catholicism who helped found the Society of Catholic Scientists. He also delivered a lecture on Georges Lemaître.

Technical books

 * Earth: Evolution of a Habitable World, 2nd Edition (Cambridge University Press, 2013)
 * Astrobiology: A Multidisciplinary Approach (Pearson Addison-Wesley, 2005)