Prof. Richard W. Pogge

Richard Pogge is an observational astrophysicist and instrument builder specializing in ground-based OIR imaging and spectrophotometry. He has a BS in Physics from Caltech and PhD in Astronomy & Astrophysics from UC Santa Cruz. After postdocs at UT Austin and Ohio State University, he joined the OSU faculty in 1992. He is a co-discoverer of the Narrow Line Seyfert 1 subclass of AGN and did early work on the ionization morphology of active galactic nuclei. He has worked on every major instrument project at Ohio State since 1989, including the twin Multi-Object Double Spectrographs (MODS1 & 2) on the Large Binocular Telescope, and the SDSS-V robotic Focal Plane Systems. His current research is focused on measuring the chemical abundances of light elements in the HII regions of nearby and distant galaxies, a topic of crucial importance for understanding the chemical evolution and growth of galaxies over cosmic time.