Carol Christian

Carol Ann Christian (born 28 December 1950) is an American astronomer and science communicator, who works for the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI; the science operations center for the Hubble Space Telescope) as a scientist on the institute's outreach program.

Christian was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, and studied astronomy and physics at Boston University, from which she graduated with a PhD in 1979 with a thesis on Investigations of distant field stars and clusters in the galactic anticenter.[1] She then worked as an astronomer for University of California, Berkeley.[2] In 1992, Christian and her colleagues decided to establish Eureka Scientific as a conduit for grant applications of non-tenure-track astronomers after UC Berkeley did not sponsor her NASA grant proposal due to the lack of any tenure-track faculty position.[3]

In August 1995, Christian was selected as the first head of STScI's new Office of Public Outreach after a national search.[4] She has continued to act as an outreach scientist for the institute as a media spokesperson, educator and author. From 2003 to 2006, she worked as a scientific policy advisor for the State Department. In 2010, she co-authored A Question and Answer Guide to Astronomy with Pierre-Yves Bely and Jean-René Roy.[5]