Tom Dame

Thomas M. Dame is Director of the Radio Telescope Data Center at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, a Senior Radio Astronomer at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, and a Lecturer on Astronomy at Harvard University. He is best known for mapping the Milky Way galaxy in Carbon Monoxide and for the discovery of both the Far 3 kpc Arm and the Outer Scutum–Centaurus Arm of the Milky Way.

Education
Dame graduated from Boston University in 1976 with a BA in Astronomy and Physics. He earned his Master's degrees and Ph.D. from Columbia University. His dissertation, earned under Patrick Thaddeus in 1983, was titled Molecular Clouds and Galactic Spiral Structure .

Career
After earning his doctorate, Dame worked as the National Research Council resident research associate at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies from 1983 to 1984 and then as a research associate at the Columbia University Department of Astronomy. He moved to Harvard University with Thaddeus in 1986, becoming a teaching fellow in 1988. Dame is Director of the Radio Telescope Data Center at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian.

Dame and Thaddeus have obtained what is by far the most extensive, uniform, and widely used Galactic survey of interstellar carbon monoxide (CO).

Dame discovered the Far 3 kpc Arm of the Milky Way in 2008 and the Outer Sct-Cen Arm in 2011.

Publications
Dame has authored or co-authored more than 100 research papers in astronomy.

Honors and awards

 * Secretary's Research Prize, Smithsonian Institution, 2009
 * Special Achievement Awards, Smithsonian Institution, 1989, 1997, 1999, 2007, 2009, 2010
 * Postdoctoral Associateship, National Academy of Sciences (N.R.C.), 1983–1984
 * Columbia University Graduate Fellowship, 1976–1978
 * College Prize for Excellence in Astronomy, Boston University, 1976

Professional memberships

 * American Astronomical Society