Profile

Image
Headshot of Michael Turner.

Michael Turner, PhD

Bruce V. and Diana M. Rauner Distinguished Service Professor, Departments of Astronomy, Astrophysics, and Physics, Enrico Fermi Institute, and the College

Michael S. Turner is the theoretical cosmologist who coined the term dark energy. He helped establish the interdisciplinary field that combines together cosmology and elementary particle physics to understand the origin and evolution of the universe. His research focuses on the earliest moments of creation, and he has made contributions to inflationary cosmology, particle dark matter and structure formation, the theory of big bang nucleosynthesis, and the nature of dark energy.