Origins & Early Life

Jane X. Luu (Vietnamese: Lưu Lệ Hằng; born July 1963) is a Vietnamese-American astronomer and defense systems engineer. She was awarded the Kavli Prize (shared with David C. Jewitt and Michael Brown) for 2012 "for discovering and characterizing the Kuiper Belt and its largest members, work that led to a major advance in the understanding of the history of our planetary system".

Pivotal Works & Achievements

Luu immigrated to the United States as a refugee in 1975, during the fall of Saigon. She and her family lived in refugee camps and motels before they settled in Kentucky, where she had relatives. She graduated from high school as valedictorian and then earned a scholarship to Stanford University, receiving her bachelor's degree in physics in 1984. Working at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at NASA after college inspired her to study astronomy. As a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she looked at links between asteroids and comets for her main PhD project.

Enduring Legacy & Impact

She also worked with David C. Jewitt to discover the Kuiper Belt, an area previously believed to contain...

Contemporary Figures & Related Historical Timelines

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• 1963 Historical Timeline & Archive — Explore world events and figures from 1963